Recommendation for Ford SOHC electronic ignition please

[Tempest_5]

Hello,

Due to enforced downtime on the Westfield after the rough attention of a van from the rear I am taking the opportunity to upgrade the ignition. Can anyone recommend an electronic ignition setup under £200 for the Ford 1.6 SOHC Pinto please.

Cheers,

Chris

[ugg10]

There is a group buy on locostbuilder for the nodiz system at the moment, a little over budget £239 iirc. This assumes you are running carbs, if injection the the budget does not come close other than the using the standard ford system.

[RochdaleGT]

depends what you understand under "electronic" ignition.

if its about replacing points...than check at ebay for the different brands of hall effect modules for your existing dizzy....prices arund 30pound....

megasquirt or nodiz would be the solution for going dizzy-less.

there is a very low-cost alternative:

http://www.ignitech.cz/en/vyrobky/tcip/tcip.htm

price is 140,-euro...and it basically does everything you need.

Edited by RochdaleGT on Saturday 7th February 22:13

[blitzracing]

Fully mappable, runs of points if you are using them.

http://www.aldonauto.co.uk/shop/product.asp?strPar...

Edited by blitzracing on Sunday 8th February 18:49

[Spydaman]

This http://trigger-wheels.com/store/contents/en-uk/d32... Does away with the distributor and fully adjustable. A bit over budget but can be done cheaper if you source the parts and worth every penny.

Edited by Spydaman on Sunday 8th February 20:01

[Tempest_5]

Thanks for all the responses. I'll have a look into all those.

I should have given a bit more detail, I want to replace the old points setup with something a bit more reliable/efficient as I do quite a bit of mileage in the car from time to time, not all of it in the dry.

Going through the Burton Power catalogue & various sites on the web has thrown up a multitude of options and I'm not sure how much advantage one setup has over any of the others, e.g. is optical better than magnetic sensing in the distributor or isn't it noticeable ? I use the car for having a blat down the back roads & commuting to work now and again so it doesn't have to be massively competitive.

I'm off to have another look at the bank balance.

[NoCorseChris]

I do tend to bang on about it whenever the topic comes up....but...

Had a xflow in the Westy since I built it in '91. It was the usual spec for the time, 1690, 11:1, Kent 234, twin 40s, Aldon dizzy. It was always a bit iffy to start due to the high compression, had something of a flat spot until it came on cam but otherwise was great.

Roll on a few years and I happened to have a spare Emerald ECU kicking about from another project and was getting fed up with the sluggish starting, so fitted the Emerald and a wasted spark Mondeo coil. Used a map for a similar spec engine. What can I say - it transformed it. Instant easy starting, flat spot gone, improved economy, better throttle response throughout.

If you have the chance, go 3D ignition. You should be able to get a decent map for your engine for most ECUs without having to get it mapped, although of course having it properly mapped would likely get you that last bit of fine tuning. Have to say, on the 'similar spec' map, the old Xflow was so good I never bothered.

A bit later I removed the carbs and fitted ITBs, then a couple of years on again, swapped out the flow for a Zetec and just moved the injection/ignition bits over.

[RochdaleGT]

NoCorseChris said:

I do tend to bang on about it whenever the topic comes up....but...

Had a xflow in the Westy since I built it in '91. It was the usual spec for the time, 1690, 11:1, Kent 234, twin 40s, Aldon dizzy. It was always a bit iffy to start due to the high compression, had something of a flat spot until it came on cam but otherwise was great.

Roll on a few years and I happened to have a spare Emerald ECU kicking about from another project and was getting fed up with the sluggish starting, so fitted the Emerald and a wasted spark Mondeo coil. Used a map for a similar spec engine. What can I say - it transformed it. Instant easy starting, flat spot gone, improved economy, better throttle response throughout.

If you have the chance, go 3D ignition. You should be able to get a decent map for your engine for most ECUs without having to get it mapped, although of course having it properly mapped would likely get you that last bit of fine tuning. Have to say, on the 'similar spec' map, the old Xflow was so good I never bothered.

A bit later I removed the carbs and fitted ITBs, then a couple of years on again, swapped out the flow for a Zetec and just moved the injection/ignition bits over.

fully agree...but installing a dizzyless 3D costs more, needs more skills and knowledge for fitting, knowledge for setting-up with computer & much more time.

a hall effect sensor from accuspark, powerspark, petronix ignitor, stealth, hotspark or whatever they call them, is a simple 30minutes, 2 wire job and will already improve a lot if you still run points. another advantage: you can easily convert back to points when the electronic module would get damaged. carry a set of points and condensator in your boot.

but keep your original dizzy in that case: the advance curve is more likely to be ok, than on the accu- or whatever spark dizzy´s...those are cheapish chinese copies from the orignal dizzy´s with advance curves which are so so....

Edited by RochdaleGT on Monday 9th February 21:02

[one eyed mick]

Accu spark is very good ,I ran one in my 2.1 pinto which was giving 145bhp on a single carb ,ok it had modded head and new man cam too but other than me goosing a module by putting+ where - should be [replaced in 24 hr via a phone call ] I found it good for the job it did

[ch427]

Have a look here, probably something reasonably priced to do just what you want.
http://www.simonbbc.com/

[blitzracing]

If you are going fully electronic, the lowest cost units (the Stealth at around £100) dont do both vaccume advance and centrifugal- so some people will tell you you dont need vacume advance on a "racing engine"- but thats purely because its flat out all the time, so never has to run under light throttle loads, and in this case you will loose 10-20 % MPG in the process. Another option is to keep running the vaccume advance on the distributor, and just disable the weights, but its a messy option as you cant easily work out your timing figures under light load as you dont know what the vacumme advance is actually doing. The Amethyst is the best value unit thats full 3d mapping, and still retain the dizzy body just to distribute the HT to each plug with the bob wieghts and Vacumme system need to be locked out. On a four cylinder engine that say revs to 6500 rpm, as single coil is good enough to give a good spark, you dont really need twin coil packs and wasted spark like on the Megajolt system, although its nice to throw the whole dizzy away, it gets more expensive as you also need a trigger wheel and pickup to replace the dizzy.

At the other end of the scale- if you want to keep your points and keep it simple then you can use an ignition amplifier, so the points stop arcing, and so hardly wear out. This unit is brillaint, but does need soldering up and putting in a box. You can run this with a high power coil as the coil primary current is no longer an issue as its not arcing the points any more.

https://www.quasarelectronics.co.uk/Item/velleman-...

Edited by blitzracing on Tuesday 10th February 16:54

[S0 What]

I've fitted lots of the below (and other similar makes) and not had an issue.
What dizzy is it? red cap bosch or the black cap motorcraft ?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FORD-GRANADA-2-0-1975-to...