Electronic Ignition Kits?

Your van doesn't need an ignition amplifier, the diesel injection pump eliminates all requirements of electronic ignition! If you really want sparks than we suggest a Tesla coil.

(Or you could tell us which petrol van you've got & we /might/ be more helpfull)

There's an even better way. There's a company called Aldon that do a points replacement electronic ignition unit. You take out your points, put a small collar over the shaft and a combined pickup/amp in the same place your points went, using the same mounting locations, shove the two wires through the hole the one to the coil went and wire the black one to the -ve on the coil and the red one to +12V.

They also do complete distributors if you want.

You can use it with a standard coil, you don't need the Flamethrower coil..

More here:

Personally I would recommend staying with points, at least it will still run after the EMP from nuclear weapons. It is also very simple to fix at the side of the road. Once a year inspect the points and replace as needed, a few moments with a dwell meter and a strobe and away you go.

Alternate systems that can fit most things are available from firms like autocar (piranha) and lumenition and there is a really good system that uses a ford eecIV system and fits everything, fully mappable and you can throw the distributor away, but that might be overkill.

Mallory do complete replacements that include an electronic amp - only other bit used is your coil. Dunno if they do one for your vehicle, though. And they ain't cheap.

Other way is to lock the distributor advance retard, fit a trigger and use a programmable ignition set. That way you can get the correct curve for your individual engine.

Such a good system virtually every car maker got rid of them long before emission control forced it on them. ;-)

they worked fine for at least a hundred years or thereabouts. As I have said before, if the chips are down, like in the outback somewhere, I'll bet you can either get a set of points going again, fit the old set you left in the glove box or bodge something else in there, try doing that with a failed TDC sensor, dead ecu etc.

I fully agree that electronic ignition 'can' give more accurate results and even improve emissions, but for simplicity and ease of repair stick with points, they are easy to diagnose and cheap to replace when needed.

I raced V8 SD1's for several years, the first component that gave trouble was the electronic ignition, I replaced the distrib. with an early one with points and 'never' had any ignition problems again, I never even replaced the points again, I did check and tweak the dwell when I checked the timing, but that was all, in several years racing.

Well except when they wore out or the condensors died.

"Duncan Wood" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

...which new condensors do increasingly rapidly, since they're now a very low volume part so have often been sat on the shelf for ages...

MrCheerful's right - points are easy to fix in an emergency. But, whilst I'd keep a points box handy on a long hard 2cv trip, I'd still fit electronic before leaving home...

I had a P6 3500s and you had to reset the points as often as you filled it up - if you wanted to keep it on song. Until I fitted a Luminition system - which then worked perfectly for the rest of the time I had the car.

But the SD1 never had a reliable system. That's the fault of Rover or Lucas.

If you want a really thorough conversion then look into Megajolt, which does away with the distributor altogether and replaces it with a Ford EDIS coil pack. Programmable ignition map too. Maybe a bit OTT for a van but not much more expensive than an electronic dizzy.

The joys of the Aldon Ignitor electronic ignition kits is that they use your original dizzy and bolt in where your points do so to convert back to points takes the same amount of time as it would to change a set.

Seconded, in 20 years driving, I've only broken down twice, both due to points/condensor problems. I changed to Megajolt on my old Crossflow and it was a revelation. Apart from a much better spark and a better advance/retard map, I programmed it for less advance at less than 500rpm, it helped the starter no end ;)

I'm using Mondeo coilpacks for a big fat blue spark and no reliability issues, I've changed engine to a Zetec now, just reprogrammed the box and it's running great. All for less than £100, I'd NEVER use a distributer again, never mind points etc. :)

...and as they wore out the ignition timing plus the quality of the spark would deteriorate dramatically. It was a once every few weeks regular task to do my points and timing, but I still had them let me down sometimes.

The best thing I ever fitted to my cars in the days of points and condensers, was a Pirana unit. I always kept the points and condenser in the boot to enable them to be fitted if the Pirana should fail, it never did and I was able to transfer it from car to car for a number of years, until I eventually got a car with no points. I still have the Pirana unit on a shelf in my garage.

You have four options, really.

1) Stay with the standard set-up 2) Add an ignition amplifier (like teh Maplins one) to the standard points set up 3) Replace the points with a contactless system (Aldon, Lumenition and so on) - the distributor continues to do all the advancing 4) Replace the entire distributor with something which does the advance and the switching electronically. The 1-2-3 system, originally for the 2CV (on which they were notoriously unreliable) and the DS (on which they seem to be OK) is available for a lot of engines now.

You have to consider carefully why you want to change. If it's to deal with starting or running problems, DON'T DO IT. Everything should start and run perfectly well with its original system. If it doesn't, find and fix the problem, don't just paper over it with a bigger spark. Eventually the problem will get so bad that your new system won't cope either, at which point you are well and truly up shit creek.

It's worth considering for maintenance reasons. Access to 2CV points is atrocious, for example, and on other cars it does save a (very) little time at each service. It might also be justifiable on performance grounds, if you are using the engine in a non-original way. For example, the Maplin kit made a real difference to starting my DS on LPG. Mind you, when the amplifier blew itself up I replaces the points and coil and put in some super chunky HT leads and got just as good results.

Finally, I have seen claims that without the regular boinking of the contacts to shake things up, the mechanical advance in distributors can seize up. If I was going electronic I would probably go 1-2-3 for that reason.

Ian

Yup, I can see how the enormous force & vibration induced by the points would make more difference than the engine vibrations.

That was very much the case with the Rover V-8s - the points system was stretched to the limit and beyond. A twin point one would have been better. Only slight plus point was the points setting mechanism was external - so you could set them using a dwell meter quickly. But this mechanism introduced extra moving parts so more things to cause slop which in turn meant the dwell angle was less stable.

Same with the Luminition. I wired it such that it would be easy to change back to points and kept a kit to do just this in the car. But never needed it.

I remember reading somewhere that very few mechanical advance systems are ever truly on spec even when new - let alone years down the line. Other thing is I reckon present day unleaded petrol ideally requires a different curve from the original which was probably set for leaded or the unleaded of the day.

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I'm not sure how much I believe it myself, but it seems at least arguable that the points effect would be partly rotary, and so able to keep the two parts of the shaft moving past each other.

Ian