Here is the picture of the "needle" I removed from my EE-16. I didn't trust it after looking at it so it was replaced with a real needle. I don't know who made this or who put it in.

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I don't know for sure; I'll take a picture of the needle valve (I held on to it) and post it later for analysis. It could be that the "needle" (hard to call it a needle really) was fine and that the missing clip is / was more important than it seems to be.

I had a similar problem with my '39 120 (also uses the EE-16 Stromberg). It too had been rebuilt by a previous owner but would overflow and dump gas out between the bowl and the casting that serves as the bowl cover and air horn (leaving a puddle on the top of the carb). I took this apart and noticed two things: one, the needle itself was a weird round blob instead of a needle (looked like a Grose jet but wasn't... it was just a God-knows-what rubber sphere on the end that may have been affected by ethanol) and, two, the clip that attaches the float to the needle was missing.

I've since replaced the funky looking needle with a proper Viton tipped needle and seat and reinstalled the missing clip. The carb has not overflowed since I did this.

Looks like a very nice '49 Super 8 for not a lot of money.

http://detroit.craigslist.org/wyn/cto/5748917076.html

That is certainly a possibility. I basically copied the idea from the other end of the cable, where it attaches to the coil with bent over tabs. If the bracket method fails I'll epoxy it. I could also get one of the syringe style epoxies and shoot some between the wire plate and the lock body, that should certainly hold it in conjunction with the brackets.

Basically the bracket method was an attempt to make it easy to get it all back apart in case I screwed something up.

I finished the repair yesterday and, alas, I did not stop to take pictures. I did just whip up a quick-and-dirty drawing of the process... hopefully this will help someone in the future (assuming they can read my chicken scratch).

I also attached a picture of the wire connection at the coil showing the extent of the missing insulation and the general "crispiness" of the 75 year old wire... this alone should convince those who haven't done this to pull it off. It took me about 2 hours of actual work to accomplish this project, a lot of which was under the dash work trying to get room to maneuver.

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Looks like I got very lucky... The coil wire from the switch to the coil is burned to a crisp as suggested.

Ok, thank you for the idea. It does make a lot of sense, more than any sort of component failure in the distributor or coil since it would restart and run ok after dying. Looks like I have a little work to do before I get to take her out again.

I drove my '39 120 approximately 100 miles yesterday with no issues whatsoever. I go to drive it again today, got less than a mile and the engine quit on me. I was able to restart after a minute, drove about 100 feet back home, it died again. This repeated until I was almost home, at which some smoke was coming out of the dash. The wire that runs from the switch to the coil was too hot to touch and had started to smoke. I pushed the car home after disconnecting the battery.

I know very little about points systems. I did not leave the key in the on position for an extended period of time. The car ran fine until it stopped dead today. Can anyone point me in the right direction to figure out what the heck is going on? Bad condensor maybe? Thank you.

Ok, thank you! I am glad nothing is wrong with the handle; those things are very costly!