Andy,
I will look tomorrow and see if I have a distributor. I know that I have a couple of spares but I am not sure if the roller beads are in place in them. They are from A14 and A15 motors. To fit
them in an A12 block, the blot slot has to be fitted from an A12 dist. I usually cut the slot out and put a large washer on to the hold down bolt. It works fine that way. Electronic dist. is
the way to go. I like the B210 dist. better than the 210. but both are great. You shouldn't use the vacuum push/pull dist. though, just the vacuum pull one, much easier to install and adjust.
You have to use the coil from an electronic dist with it. The point dist. has the resister on it and is only 40,000 volt whereas the later coil is 60,000 volt. A while back, did you say you
needed a grill? I have one.
I found a coupe in a junk yard today. It is mostly there but rusted and it's an automatic. I may get the tranny for mine. It will kill gas milage but the auto is much faster than the stick as
I am getting older and shifting is losing its appeal. I need a front bumper but the one in the junk yard is too rusted. The right side id bent up pretty good. I bought the drivers door for
$50. My glass got broken and he wouldn't sell just the glass.
PAECO in Birmingham, Alabama has excellent valve train equiptment for a reasonably price. If you buy a whole motor from them, they will guarentee it for one race weekend. Nobody else in the
world will do that. They make that good of equiptment.
Good luck,
Mareo Speedwagon

In my first 1200, I cut out the wall in front of the radiator and installed a 3-core cross-flow radiator from an Oldsmobile. I never used a thermostat and in the summer, the guage would
barely read up to the cool mark with the turboed A12. When I put the A14 in, the guage ran a little higher. The cross-flow is the way to go. I have an aluminum cross-flow VW Jetta radiator
in my coupe now and it works fine. The oil cooler is a must. I also added a power steering pump with an electric motor into my oil system to keep pressure on the turbo after shutdown. I
also used it to pressurize the oil system before start-up. I got a bit over 90,000 miles out of that couple of hundred HP A12 with no problems and believe me that little motor screamed all
of the time. When people heard it, it made then turn their heads and look at what was making that unique sound.

Hi Andy, Your distributor sounds like your problem for sure. I have had that problem a couple of times, i.e. the roller balls coming out from between the plates. That does sound like the cause
of all of the problems. I have the Weber carb on my A14 and it runs good enough but it sort of klled my gas milage. I wish I had a new Hitachi carb. I can get over 65 MPG with the Hitachi and
am now restricted to less than 40 MPG. Also I can't find a breather to fit on the Weber and still close my hood. The only problem with my Hitachi is the butterfly shaft wears and lets air leak
around it and it has a hard time idleing.
As for the Thunderbird, it is fast but when a little 1200 passed you in a turn, you will want your 1200 back. Spend your money on a turbo for your 1200 and you will be more happy. The 1200 is
a better engineered car and the A-series engines will hold together better than the Ford V6 also. Simplicity wins races. You can get 200 HP from your engine for the price of the T-bird and
have half of the weight. HP to weight ratio is greatest with the 1200. A 100 HP A-engine would be quicker that the T-bird and still give you gas milage. That's my two cents worth.
Mareo Speedwagon

hi knighteyes, do you want one or do you have one that you want to sell? I am interested in
getting another 1200.

I was hitchhiking to California and a guy picked me up in a 2000 roadster. It was missing at times. The guy said it needed carb work. He had a broken leg so he let me drive. I didn't think it
was the carbs. I found a loose wire going to the distrubitor and that fixed that one. One thing that drove me nuts on my first 1200. It would drive fine but at times it would just start
misfiring. It took me a while to find the problem. In the distributor, the plate advances when the vacuum pulls it. The plate has three ball bearings that are held in place by a thin plastic
frame. The frame broke and one of the three balls had shifted and that made the plate sit sort of over to one side and sometimes cause the rotor to hit the stator. Most of the time it worked
ok. Good luck finding the cause of your delima. I will try to remembeer all of the problems that I had from my 1200. I had it for over 300,000 miles. 90,000 on the turboed motor. 121,000 on
the stock setup. At one time or another, I think I have run across most of the tricks a 1200 can play on a diligent driver. That takes a lot of memory for this old hippy. Someplace I have all
of my log books on the first 1200(Mareo Speedwagon) but they are in storage in one of the many boxes. I bought that car new in September 1972 and kept a perfect log on the car. I recorded all
expenses and repairs and changes and placed all of the receipts in the taped up back pages of the logs. I haven't done that to anyother car but it was the only car I have bought new.

In the dark, look at your disstributor cap and wires. It is best to put the brakes on and rev the motor up as much as possible with as much breaking as possible to put a load on the motor.
Watch for spark leaks. My brother's Olds would start and run properly but put a load on it and it missed so bad that it would stall out. One plug boot was not down all of the way and the
spark was leaking to groung. That made the next two cylinders misfire also. Aren't the two flat top carbs a little large for the engine? I had one of the same carbs (from a 260Z) mounted
onto a turbocharger on an A14 motor in my 1200. Those were not too bad of carbs, The problem in them was that the whole intake system was screwed.
If a plug boot is not seated properly a spark could give nightmares. or a cracked wire will lose spark also. Has your timing been checked for proper settings?

Errrnstak, I am not sure of which carb you have. My stock carb screwed up once and the power valve was loose. I had to disassemble the whole carb to tighten it. If you have brown
on your spark plugs, it means the octane is too high. Octane has to be matched to the compression ratio to get optimum performance. Too high of octane means that the gasoline is
still burning as it exit the cylinder. Too low octane explodes before the piston reaches BDC causing detonation.

Sorry about that but I missed saying that I mounted the engine and trans aft about an inch. That is why I had to remove the fuel pump. The driveshaft had to be shortened also.
I had that shortened and balanced at a truck repair shop for $50. This was three years ago. The machine shop wanted considerably more. My apologies for omitting that bit of
info.

Usually the carb is rich and/or oil is being burned and turning to carbon on the pistons and/or valves. The heated carbon acts as a glow plug. You should have an anti dieseling
solinoid on your carb that shuts off the fuel when you shut off the ignition. I assume that it is working properly because your engine gets enough fuel as it is running.`Also check
your pcv valve.

Hello Andy, The Subaru turbo will fit nicely. In 1980, I bought a turbo from a burnt Mustang. It was a bit too large. It worked beautiful, though. (I have a Subaru turbocharger now that I plan
to use someday.) I bolted an SU to it. Fuel injection was more rare then. Most turbos now are the blow through design. The older ones were mostly suck through. Yours is probable a blow through
if it was on an injected motor. The suck through has a seal that blocks off gasoline fron getting to the bearings and the blow through does not have that seal. It would be nice if there was an
injection manifold to be had. I have heard of them but I don't know how reliable the sourse was on that. My new car is going to be another Studebaker. I want to find a 1953 two door hardtop. I
have had six Studebakers but no 53 hardtop. That is the most beautiful car ever made in the old USA.
Now let me tell you about my little Caroline and this one last trip we took one time. It was mid-December and real cold that night and all of the streets were lit up with Christmas lights.
When I looked in my mirrow, I saw some smoke and I knew that my motor was about to croak. This made my heart jump up in my mouth and I prayed that we'd get home before all of the oil ran out,
I slowed it down to under twenty-five, I was doing every thing I could to keep the motor alive. It took a long long time to drive my lady home and then I added some oil and drove my Caroline
on. I knew that wasn't the smart thing to do because most of her motor was still brand new. I knew my Caroline would have a rough way to go when her motor locked up and she wouldn't go any
more. I had her towed home and put her under a cover. I've not even looked at her since, I mean , why even bother? I mean, she hadn't been moved in over a year now and how to get her rolling
again, I just don't know how. Now don't you think that I'm being a procrastinator, I just can't find a motor for my fifty-three Studebaker.
That is a true story. I wrote it in April, 1987. Have a good day.