1932’ Oldsmobile parts restoration

[chistech]

I started going through some extra parts that I have knowing there’s probably someone out there who could use them. One is a fuel pump for the first year L-32 8cyl motor and the other is a rare Stromberg EC-2 carburetor for the F-32 6cyl motor. As you can see, both are excellent examples of each and are totally rebuilt, ready to use or show so there’s nothing needed at all (other than carb adjustments) to put them into immediate service. Many EC-2 carburetors have been abused and modified through the years most commonly with breathers drilled and attached through the bowl covers. This carb has none of those modifications. Many times they were modified because of hard starting after long periods, (1-2 weeks of sitting), because people incorrectly diagnosed the issue as vapor lock or the Stromberg automatic choke being the cause of the hard starting, (again, the chokes were incorrectly removed and manual choke cables installed). The real issue is the accelerator pump shaft goes through the top cover of the bowl and the hole is sealed with a felt washer held down on the opening with spring pressure. The elongated fuel bowl as a lot of surface and because of the excessive ventilation of the bowl, the fuel quickly evaporated when the car sits. It wasn’t the automatic chokes fault nor was it vapor lock, it was simple evaporation that was the issue with the EC-2. Adding the additional bowl cover vents only added to the problem. Removing the cover and adding fuel to the bowl, or lots of turning over to fill the bowl with fuel from the tank fixed the hard starting issue. I’ve learned this from simple ownership of my F-32. After long times of sitting, I add fuel to my carb by using a 10ml syringe with an 18 gauge needle and lifting up on that spring loaded cover on the accelerator pump shaft and inserting the needle alongside the pump shaft, filling the bowl. A couple syringes  worth of fuel added this way fills the bowl enough allowing the accelerator pump to squirt fuel into the carb and the automatic choke does it’s work starting the car as it should.

     I have more time than you’d think in each one as the vacuum diaphragm in the pump is riveted to its shaft and must be drilled out, then the shaft bored and tapped for a retaining dome head socket machine screw to hold it all back together. Then the diaphragm itself is commercially unavailable as far as I could find, so one has to be cut out and attached to the shaft with blue loctite. There’s lots of hours in the carb as it has to get totally disassembled, which means removing some difficult to remove jets, then glass beaded inside and out, then reassembled with a new rebuilt kit from Stromberg. Then the polishing and cleaning off of the polishing compound in the nooks and crannies all adds time.  What unique about the EC-2 is the upper half, the white metal/aluminum part with all the workings other than the throttle butterfly that’s in the lower cast metal housing, is the same exact part as what the V-12 Auburn and pierce arrow motors use. You can’t find many of these carbs left anymore as it seems they made two generations of them with the first generation being made out of a very unstable white metal that would disintegrate after the years and the second generation being what’s still out there, most likely like this carb and others that are still in operation. While both pieces look over done from stock, a few months of simple, “under the hood patina” has them looking “as new OEM “ .

I offered these two pieces for sale for reasonable cost to my list of 32’ olds owners and they both sold immediately. Hard to find and both correctly restored, drop in ready is the reason why. This is helping more of our old cars get on the road and run dependability.