MTFCA Forum

Ford Used the Ford Vaporizer (AKA Holley Vaporizer) starting in late 1925 for some Model T cars and 1917 for Fordson tractors. By late 1926 they used them on all model T cars.

I have four of these carburetors plus more parts. I found that of four vaporizers two had the pictured hole and two did not. I know what this hole does but suspect you may be scratching your head to figure it out. Let's see who guesses correctly!


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That's for the water injector that gives you 200 mpg.

Nitrous oxide injection port. Gets you all the way to thirty hp

Air balance port for when the choke is closed and flapper is too.

I take it no one has ever seen the 90 degree sheetmetal elbow the bolts on there!

They are almost always missing and they where used for only a short period.

It is a hole that you use when you rebuild the vaporizer, an alignment pin is inserted to clock the assembly.

Joe Bell, I agree with you that elbow was put on in late production and attached with a screw and nut

Joe Bell !!!!!!



Wow, I thought this was going to be a hard one. Joe hit it right on the elbow.



I have only seen two of these. One was an obscure photo in Bruce's encyclopeda. It was just a generic vaporizer photo which didn't mention the elbow. The other one is the one I found at a swap meet. I had to buy the carburetor to get the elbow. I am now preparing to get it onto my late '27 T (I have to use a casting which hast the hole as the vaporizer on Rusty did not have it!).. The rest of the carburetor it came on will go into the parts pile since the JB Weld repair on it may not be period correct!

Have any of you ever seen one of these before? Joe, do you know when the carb came with the elbow (early?, late?, mid-production?, Fordson?).

Vaporizers run the cars quite well, but they can be difficult to get sealed to work well.

By the way, Mark the port you are thinking of is at point A and R in this diagram:




TH

I have the elbow on my 27 touring, and I have on my spare vaporizer.

Jim Bowery

I know I have given a couple friends the elbow to make there's complete and maybe one may be in my parts bin of vaporizers. But what year and when?? Hope this helps, there are better historians than I when it comes to the vaporizer!

I just figured the hole was for a nail to hang it on the wall, after extreme frustration for a whole summer of tinkering with it....

Idea correct, location wrong.

There was one on my 26 coupe when I bought it, but, I converted it back to an NH.

By gum, I have one of those on a derelict, numbers matching, rotted off, and Ruckstell equipped sedan chassis here!
May of '27's #14,959,211 with that elbow. I thought, "Man that's cool! I should put it on the truck!"... Didn't, too busy.
Glad I left it there instead of taking it off, only to perhaps find nowhere to put it on the truck...
Maybe I'll look deeper on the truck tomorrow.
The spare Vaporub from out west doesn't have the hole and the July of '26 engined truck did not get looked at today.
Some of my photos were soooo close to revealing whether it had that hole or not... Nope. Don't know yet.
Didn't realize these were oddballs.
This may be a dead subject for some fellas. For us Vaporizer liker's, Different story.
I like it because it's difficult and very particular. Today.
Poor old boy hasn't ran in two years. I may have a different attitude on start up day.
Still thinking 1/4 turn more, three chokes and vroom. Hand start only right now. Runs so nice til that one coil warms up.

Thanks Terry! Inspiration.

Mark, it is now evident to me that the oft referred to vaporizer cut away view which I showed above is wrong. Hole A and R are not on the bottom of the casting. There is no R hole but rather a hole A passing horizontally through the casting and the choke rod. Also there is a small diameter vent hole into the chamber surrounding the inlet tube (D) which would be between A and R on the drawing. When you choke a vaporizer the air intake horn is choked off and the vent at A is closed off leaving only that small vent hole.

The air entering mostly goes in the horn and through the venturi creating a low pressure which sucks mixture up past the stove area and into the intake tube to the venturi. closing the choke shuts off all of the air except for the small vent hole. This allows the engine to suck a very rich mixture composed of raw fuel from the float bowl up past the stove area and a small amount of air from the vent hole. So all the balancing for choking is just mostly choking off almost all air causing almost all air through the vent hole which is an incredibly small volume to try and run the ca upon. No wonder the choke is so effective in stopping the engine!
I think that the reason the Vaporizer carb gets such a bad rap is that that chamber around the inlet tube which is home to the vent hole is almost always crudded up with dirt and rust. For the carburetor to function this chamber must be cleaned out. To do this the inlet tube must be removed (it has a set screw) and the chamber must be cleaned out. Then you will surely need to replace the inlet tube and nut... The nuts are always buggered up and cracked and you will damage the inlet tube upon removal. I doubt that many people clean out this area and so can't get the carburetor to vent properly thus preventing proper mixture reaching the stove area. Cleaning this area is very difficult and very necessary.
TH [/size]