MTFCA Forum

I sent a U & J carbuertor to Stan for rebuilding a year ago February. I sent along an aluminum offset manifold that hadn’t had the mounting holes drilled. Anxious to get it back for driving this year but fully know he is not doing as much rebuilding work these days, so it will come home when he gets to it on his schedule. Kinda hard to know what that schedule actually is based on my emails sent about every three months. Has anyone received carburetor rebuilds from him lately? Not sure what to expect ... another year? Not complaining ... but it sure would be nice to know.

I do have aquestion about mounting these. Does anyone have a picture of a U & J with an offset manifold designed to set the carburetor back for use on a generator era T ? Did I need the offset manifold or does a straight down version work and still clear the oiler on the generator? I don’t see any vintage ads showing this.

I received two NH Holly's from him about a month ago. He did one for me originally, and coated it in a gray. When I had sent him the one NH, I asked if he could do it in black. He then offered to redo the original one in black, at no charge
It took about 7-9 months, but definately worth the wait

Here is one of Stan's U & J carbs with a straight down manifold on a generator equipped car.
The generator was rebuilt by Ron Patterson and has a sealed bearing so the oiler is not necessary. I plugged the hole with a screw which leaves about 1/8th inch clearance.

I received my OF back from Stan on Monday. It looks great. He does them in batches so 4 or 5 other guys probably got theirs back also.
Have faith. Stan will get to it. Us old guys move slow!

Dale,

No problem with the in line fuel filter? I thought the U & J drew a lot of gas. I see how close the straight down manifold sets the carb on a generator equipped engine, but understand the oiler is gone. Interesting. How do you like that carb?

As is clearly stated on my website and as I have stated here several times: anyone who has work here that is not complete or in process can have their carburetor back at any time with a full refund.
I am pushing 80, had two heart related hospital stays last year, turned out close to 100 carburetors, put up about 5000 bales of hay, sold half a dozen balers, 5 tractors, 3 swathers and a variety of other equipment, had several auctions and played half a dozen music jobs, did 12 radio shows and tried to keep a girlfriend and a bunch of other people happy.
I run this entire operation myself, I answer the phones and the emails - sometimes 100 a day - spend countless hours on the phone offering free advice on everything from carburetors (3 calls on Easter Sunday) to ruckstell rebuilding to baler knotter problems to auction questions.
I Also have two teenage girls I am sending to college, neither of which is a daughter.

I'm sorry I am behind in the shop but I am. I am not taking any more work for 2019.
Mark, your u and J will be in a box tomorrow. I'm sure you can find someone to do the quality of work I do for the price I charge and do it on your schedule. By the way, I don't recall ever getting a check for the balance on the rebuild but I will have to check my books when I get home.
I am in great falls volunteering at the swap meet since so many of the members are too old to do much.
Tomorrow night I am doing a benefit concert for a fundraiser where the kids went to school.
I am doing everything I can.

The fact you can work a girlfriend into that mix is amazing!
The rest sounds easy! Sorry couldn't help it.

Yeah, well, the other one doesn't know about Sandi and Sandi doesn't know about her......... I'm a musician. We are all like that pretty much.

Stan,

This may not be the place to communicate this but you offered switching out those plugs on the OF gratis. Do not send the U & J back. Finish the job when you can and if you have a sense of when you can get to it maybe you could let me know. That’s not too much to ask. We’re all busy ... I teach 23 group workshops this season here and outside the USA and I never say to the people who attend .. I’m too busy to teach. It’s my job.

Mark the car runs great. Zoom Zoom as Stan says.
Not ever a hint of fuel starvation with the fuel filter.

That’s why I sent my carburetor to Stan. I saw that he specialized in the U & J . I’m anxious to have that same zoom experience.

Mark Osterman wrote: ↑

Fri Apr 26, 2019 10:05 am

if you have a sense of when you can get to it maybe you could let me know. That’s not too much to ask. We’re all busy .

Mark I agree completely. It is unreasonable to expect someone who has paid to have a carburetor rebuilt wait years for it to be returned. If Stan is that far behind he shouldn't be advertising carburetors and services in the classifieds. He should focus on paid up customers that have waited patiently over a year.


Jason Walters

To be clear, I have not paid Stan for his rebuilding of the U&J carburetor I sent him. I offered to a couple of months ago but he said it was fine to wait until it is done. I did send him an unrestored Stomberg OF at the same time as sending him the U &J as partial payment, the rest to be paid in cash. He has had a notice on his website that he is no longer taking new work. I really do want him to rebuild the carburetor and am just wondering when it will move up the list of other customers waiting for his service.

LOL ... hmmm ... yes

Something I learned very early on was to never give the carrot to the mule before the field was plowed. Same goes for half a carrot. FWIW

For what it is worth. I have made several deals with Stan Howe. In each and every instance Stan was right up front with me and told/warned me that it would take time as I was not at the head of the line. In all of these cases he had a carb for sale and if I wanted it I needed to "take it off the market by paying for it". This was logical and reasonable to me since some of these carbs do not come along every day let alone having someone who could restore it to working order. Heck, I can find carbs all over the country but I cannot rebuild one to the degree that Stan does. That said I have waited and in every single instance my wait was eventually rewarded and I am 100% satisfied, the wait was worth the outcome. Right now I think I have all of my exotic carb needs covered by either Russ Potter or Stan Howe. I can only guess what we hobbyists will have to do when these two great carb men are no long excepting rebuild work. I hope someone does get the opportunity to spend time with both of them to learn as much as possible from them before all of the little tricks and bits are lost to memory. I think Russ has a successor but I am not sure about Stan. These two are true assets to the T hobby, hope they hang with us for as long as possible. Mike

I haven't read the forum for weeks.

Let's just cut to the chase.

My policies:
1. Everything is paid for before it leaves here. I do not have time for payment plans, billing, bookkeeping, etc. Paid for, it goes in a box when it gets done and shipped.

2. I do not have some magic parts supply. Send me a piece of crap needing parts I don't have or can't make and it will take longer.

3. First in is not first out. I may have to find a parts carb, cast some parts, make some parts, set up a machine to do work that after it is set up can do the same operation on several units.

4. EVERYTHING is paid for before it leaves here. Repair work is paid for up front. I have had too many deals where somebody sent me something to "Check it over and tell me what it's going to cost." I spend half a day taking it apart, then they tell me "The old lady won't let me spend that kind of money so just send it back and I'll see what I can do with it." I not only wasted the time and effort of taking it apart - which they couldn't do - but end up spending $15 bucks and more time to pack it up and send it back to them. Or deliver it to their kid at 7 AM on a Sunday morning who is going through Helena and is "too busy to pick it up at your shop, just run it up to him at Steve Celar's where he is loading a car he bought." "Are you ever going to get that damned carb to him, I called you half an hour ago and he is waiting for you to bring it!!!!!!!!!"

My deal is that anybody who wants their money back along with their carb -- just let me know and I will have it in a box. If you don't want that deal then you wait your turn like everybody else.

5. I had two major heart issues that put me in the hospital in 2018. The first one in late February they told me I would not have lived through the night if I hadn't been taken to the emergency room. When I got out the Cardiologist told me not to walk more than 30 feet without resting or lift anything over 5 lbs for at least two weeks. The second one in mid August I collapsed in the parking lot of a restaurant. I spent another week in the hospital and came home with a pacemaker and told to rest as much as possible for the first month -- September -- and take it easy, stay out of the cold and not exert myself. So in 2018 I pretty much missed 4 months of work, spent about $16,000 on Dr bills and didn't get as much done in the shop as I would have liked. I told EVERYBODY that I would send their carb back with their payment or refund any payment on anything they had purchased. One person opted to get a refund. (He now wants me to work on a POS he bought off ebay -- screw that) I pretty much retired from the auction business, sold my cashier trailer, sold my swather and both my balers, didn't go down to my place in Texas during the coldest and nastiest winter we have had in the last 25 years because I did not want to be away from my Cardiologist if something more happened. So far so good except for a smaller episode in March of this year after I got back from Chickasha. I'm back working about half time from what I used to but am still having trouble standing and walking.

6. I do not have time to be pen pals, I do not have time to detail everything I do every day and I don't have time to take photos of "where my carb is in process, I'd like to see some pictures of it all apart." It is nobody's business if I take a day off to go to Sandi's son's graduation from the University of Montana, Magna Cum Laude, High Honors, President's award for outstanding achievement. His sister came home for graduation from Stanford and we were together with their mother for the first time in almost two years. It was the first time we had every all been together with their Grandmother since they were little kids. I'm going to that. Period.

7. The guy's carburetor is and has been done. He has been told several times that there is an outstanding charge of $250 against it. So far I have not seen any money. I don't bug people about money. I don't have time and I don't know their circumstances. I know I just spent well over a thousand dollars on graduation for plane tickets and motel rooms and dinners and etc. I pay my bills and I expect to be paid for what I do.

The carburetor is in the mail, I told Ashley when she came to help a couple days ago to go ahead and ship it, if we get paid we get paid, if we don't we don't but at least we will be done with it. I have offered several times to send it back with a payment for the OF he traded in on the rebuild and he won't accept that. USPS tracking 9405503699300495656064

8. I have been in business of one kind and another for over 50 years. I have rebuilt about 1750 carburetors for customers in about 15 countries, conducted 425 commercial auctions from Minnesota to Colorado to Idaho, 20 + counties in Montana; been in the water well drilling business; have two little two bit ranches; spent 40 years in the violin/stringed instrument business and have bought and sold way over a hundred tractors and related machinery off my lot and my websites in the last 35 or 40 years with customers over half a dozen states. I've played music in Montana and all over the west since the 1950's. I am in the Montana Country Music Hall of Fame and an award wining songwriter. This is Montana where you will not be in business long if you don't take care of people because everybody knows everybody. I like being in business, I like people and I like what I do. But I don't care who you are, don't call me drunk on Sunday afternoon telling me you told me you wanted your ******* carburetor back in 60 days and it is now 77 ******** days and you don't give a **** about my daughter and her ********** basketball tournament. We will sort that deal and you won't like the sort.

9. Anyone who doesn't like my business policies is more than welcome to not do business here. You will be happier and I will be happier. My brother in California had a sign up in his office that said, "Rule number 1, the customer is NOT always right. 2. We have not lost a customer, we have eliminated a problem for this business. 3. Any questions, read number 1 and 2 again. I appreciate customers, appreciate the business and like what I do or I wouldn't do it but I am pushing 80 and can only do so much. Period.

10. Again, the carburetor is in the mail. ANYBODY who wants anything here that is waiting to be done is welcome to let me know they want their money back and it will be in the mail. I am not accepting ANY MORE WORK for 2019. I have been wading through the pile from last year when I was having all the health problems. I still have two that I sold after Chickasha to get done. The buyers are in no hurry. They are smart enough to know that these carbs are made out of unobtainium and if they could find another one there is virtually no place else to get it restored.

11. Next time somebody is pissing and moaning about the vendors and how there are no young people getting in the hobby and the business.............. My boy's first job out of college has a starting salary of $78,000 a year + a $20,000 signing bonus and a $3000 moving allowance. Whey would I have ever tried to get him interested in this business??? Put up with people badmouthing you on a forum???? Have to ding on people to get paid??? Have thousands and thousands of dollars of brass carburetors that will probably get thrown on a pallet and sold at your estate auction someday????

12. I'm headed out to the shop to go to work. This is one of those days I wish I had kept my teaching job and moved into administration. I had the Masters and could have done it. I would have been retired years ago. As it is, I'm taking off a couple hours early today and going to a wedding reception for a young man I've been friends with for years. I am also taking Sunday to go to the graduation party for a girl I've been putting on stage with me since she was about 8 or 9 who now has her own band and booking out playing dances and some shows. I'm sorry I will not be in the shop working on a carburetor but she will only graduate once and the carburetor will be there Monday.

Stan Howe
Brass Carburetors -- Pre 1930 Brass Carburetors. Restoration, Buy - Sell www.strombergOF.com
Westmore Land and Livestock -- Lazy HM ranch, Westmore Ranch, operations in Fallon, Custer, Broadwater and Madison County Montana.
Front Range Auctioneers - since 1982 - 425 successful auctions. Properly Organized - Widely Advertised - Honestly Sold - Promptly Settled www.frontrangeauctions.com
Montana Barn Cars -- Dealing in small acreage farm and ranch equipment -- Tractors - Swathers - Balers - Collector Vehicles. www.montanabarncars.com

Stan,

I just sent you an email and will send you full payment for the rebuilding work plus postage on both the U&J and intake manifold ... and the postage on the OF you sent previously ... just need the amounts.

Mark

Jason
Please get into the antique carburetor rebuilding business and show us all how it is supposed to be done.
Thank you

Last night I was looking at a U+J with manifold I've for a long time.
I thought I should do some research and find out if their anything special.
I guess I'll start here.
Is a E+J any better than a stock T carburetor ?

My understanding is that they are the bees knees .. particularly if restored by Stan who has specialized in them for some time now. I think there were two manifolds; one pre-generator which mounts straight down. The later type manifold was cocked back to allow for the generator.

Dan, I sent you an email thru the forum. It may be in your spam email.