You'd need a source for the 8 volt supply for the Hall Effect which the orange box doesn't possess.
Again, 100% correct. I did the conversion on my AAR last year, couldn't be happier.
The failing of the ChryCo ignition box is that it runs to much dwell time, like 98% which manifests itself as a shorter burn time at the spark plug because the ignition coil is turned on much too soon shortening the secondary output from the coil. That always drove me bonkers.
IIRC, there was a stand alone Hall Effect Ignition box used in the late
70s/early 80s in the Omni/Horizon 1.7liter. But that doesn't solve the problem that there ever existed a stock 2.2 distributor that (to my knowledge) contained any type of mechanical or vacuum advance. AFAIK, they were all computer controlled.
The Pertronix is an excellent choice and would work better than any kludged set up assuming there is one available to fit the OPs Bosch distributor.
Because they're a potential failure point and they can burn the paint off of the firewall where they're mounted.
The HEI on the AAR still has a ballast in place, the resistor is gutted out and a fat chunk of 10 ga. wire replaces it.
But the ballast resistor is bypassed during starting, so how can 'it' "make for much easier starting?"
You bypassed the ballast...
Sure you can, design an ignition coil like GM, Ford and eventually, Chrysler did (E-core coil) instead of the antique crap the Chrysler used (oil filled coil) Better rise time, better saturation..
I have seen papers which intended to prove that a long spark period (reduced dwell, in essence) did no good at all in the ignition process. Capacitive discharge had a very short spark period in the original embodiments.
I dont have much of an opinion one way or the other, but have seen the minimal spark period CD systems do a good job.
Absolutely.. IIRC, systems like this often use a low bias current as there is an optimum current level for long life and good performance. You may remember, Steve, how much this is...I dont. Maybe a couple of tenths of an amp?
We put a Subaru 2.2L engine in an airplane, and used a Ford TFI- IV distributor that ran the coil directly. Can't remember the wiring, though. Only used three, I think, of the five or six terminals. The airplane is in Sweden now. That distributor even had advance, and I don't know how it did it. I guess the chip has an advance function to it. The only mod to the distributor was to the shaft drive.
I think Steve or another poster mentioned the possibility of welding distributor shafts together
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which is a good idea if you have access to TIG/MIG welders and metal lathes and are willing to spend the time to do it right.
However, that isn't practical for me, I have the most basic tool sets and a hobby welder, so the most practical conversion I can do based on my limited set of tools and budget, is to swap out the distributor drive cog between the VW and mini-mopar/k-car 2.2 distributors. This works out pretty well, so I'm preferring stick with this procedure, as you only need to ream out the cog a little, as noted in the website:
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"...to replace the stock 009 distributor drive cog with the stock K-car's cog, both of which are fixed to their respective shafts with a securing pin at the bottom of the shaft...the 009 [distributor drive] shaft (shown on right of picture) has a bigger O.D., which means you have to slightly ream out the I.D. of the K-car's distributor-drive cog in order to get it to fit on the VW drive shaft. You can see the K-car drive cog in the center of photo. I reamed it out with a high-speed 'Dremel' type of rotary grinder..." Too bad the GM HEI distributors don't have the drive cogs on the end of the shaft like the Mopar units, which would make it a no-brainer to swap them out without extensive machining and welding of shafts together.
So far my Bosch 009 hasn't broke in that spot, so it's probably good enough for the long run.
M> > Given that the basic Hall-effect distributor will require one wire for
Darned if that Bosch 009 dizzy didn't conk out on my Caravan today!
I was going down the highway around a curve, and suddenly heard a loud "pop", like it stuttered once, and I lost my spark, then I had to coast on what momentum I had left.
Luckily I found a convenience store parking lot to come to a final halt.
In between the bursts of rain showers, I pulled out my trusty back-up Bosch
009, bolted it to the Caravan engine block, put on the same 009 distributor cap,secured it with the 2 clips, and it fired right up. I was on my way again.
Don't know what it could be this time, but probably either the points or condensor. Need to get the stock mopar dizzy or some electronic ignition ready to run in it soon. Definitely motivated to do the work this Labor Day.
Yikes! I'd hesitate to trust any webpage with a first sentence that reads, " FYI, all Chrysler/Dodge 4-cylinder "K-car" engine models, which were mass-produced in the early and mid-1980's, appear to be based on a VW (water-cooled) short block."
Good grief. Nothing in common at all. Chrysler DID use a VW block for the entry-level engine in the Omni/Horizon for many years, but it was never used in a K-car. The 2.2 used in K-cars is all-Chrysler and shares some heritage with the B/RB big-block v8s (same main bearing sizes, which is why the 2.2 turbo bottom end can live at 400+ horsepower) and the slant-6.
This doesn't make sense. IF you can run the orange box, YOU CAN RUN HEI and ANY COIL YOU WANT! By the way, I don't understand the hate for oil-filled coils. Yes, E-cores are great, but there are oil-filled coils that perform just as well. Oil filling also provides more uniform coil cooling than a solid molded dielectric around the coils, too. Anyway, it was the OEM design requiring a ballast that was the problem, not the fact that the coil was oil-filled per se.
The problem *I* see is that you're married to a hall-effect pickup, which won't trigger EITHER the orange box or GM HEI. And if you're talking about the most common 2.2/2.5 distributors, you got no way of applying an advance curve without the computer.
I am glad you corrected me on Chrysler design history and I'll note that error when I update the pages. I can definitely vouch for the Bosch conversion, otherwise I'd have been a pedestrian a long time ago.
What threw me off, is that there's definitely some German (VW/Bosch) influence in distributor design of the 2.2. Just compare the cogs at the bottom of each distributor, other than the Bosch's off-set, they're pretty similar in function. Is there any other non-Mopar (foreign or American) distributor which can fit almost exactly in the engine block like the VW dizzy can? I'd like to know.
Chrysler was officially married to Daimler/Benz AG in 1998, but I would speculate that Lee Iacocca was influenced by the German designs back in the
1980's.
Also didn't Chrysler move the plants to Mexico for K-car producti> > I should mention that one minor fear that's motivating me to go back to the
Got me, but a distributor is hardly more a part of the engine design than an alternator. I think all of the "Big 4" (including AMC) used to buy distributors from third-party vendors like Prestolite for certain applications. Just like they all bought Holley and Carter carburetors.
They probably kept the Bosch-influenced design from the VW 1.6L that was used in the Omnirizon.
Chrysler's Toluca MX plant did indeed build 2.2/2.5s for K cars (after they had ceased K-car production in the US for that matter.) But loooong before that, Toluca was building industrial slant-sixes. And that plant built the vast majority (if not all) of the PT Cruisers.
Toulca MX and the plants at Bramlea and Windsor in canada have been with Ghrysler for many years and have shared production of numerous models with the US plants. My '66 Polara was built in Windsor.
I often wonder if Lee Iacocca got his idea of the K-cars from the VW "people's wagon" concept. All those air-cooled VWs, Type 1 (bug, ghia, thing), Type 2 (vans), Type 3 (fastbacks/hatchbacks) and to some extent the Type 4 (vans and fastbacks as well as the Porsche 914, although these air-cooled engines were re-designed with stronger castings, a little more 'beefier' crankcase), they were basically built on the same powerplants (engine/tranny combinations) and VW just modified the body styles to make them appeal to a greater number of peoples. There were some minor but important differences in engine design(i.e. flywheels from 914 will fit on Wolfsburg Type 4 VW crankshaft, but as they were designed in Stuttgart for the Porsche 5-speed tranny, the Porsche 914 flywheel/clutch assembly won't work exactly right on the Type 4s, due to different trannies and slightly different thickness of 914 flywheel). But a lot of these VW parts were designed to be interchangeable.
So I figure Iacocca just used that tried-and-true VW concept and applied it to the K-cars, economically it turned Chrysler around and brought it out of bankruptancy. Of course, building those big battle tank engines for the Pentagon ($10 million a piece in 1980's dollars), that helped to bring in the extra gravy, too.
As far as the design of the 2.2 distributor, I would have to think that it was something more than an after-thought of engine design, more than an alternator or even a carb design (and BTW the VW 2-bbl 'progressive' carbs fit perfectly on the K-car manifolds). You have to drill a specified hole in the crankcase and you had to design a way to get that distributor to sychronize its motion with the engine. It is more than coincidental that a German Bosch distributor unit would almost drop right in the K-car engine block.
Well, since the K-car and particularly the 2.2 engine were in development long before Iacocca arrived at Chrysler, I'd have to say "not likely."
Iacocca didn't create the K-car. He moved it to being top priority and slashed the large cars (and unfortunately the big-block engine, which wrecked Chrysler's truck sales in the 80s since Ford still had the 460 and GM still had the 454). That didn't recover until the Cummins diesel arrived in 1989, when some of the bad decisions Iacocca made started getting un-done.
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