Below is a distributor system that has been in the works for about 3 months. We had a free hour on Saturday night so we did some test assembly to check the fit of the sub components. It is a specialty item with two Crane units in it, and no advance. It is something that we may use in the future on Turbo engines, thus the working title E/E-T.
Above, as you see it, this is a non-running model, but it has a serious purpose. The red parts you see are plastic, and were made for us by Corvair/Panther builder Paul Salter. They are very accurate, because they went straight from the CAD model we worked up on his laptop to his 3D printer. There are 3 red parts: The large base plate will be made from 3/16 aluminum, the reluctor wheel and the rotor drive will be made of steel to be affixed to the main shaft. The small parts were printed in 5 minutes each, the plate took an hour. They allowed us to check the fit of all the parts without sending anything in to the machine shop. The cap and rotor are Ford V-6 parts.
The spark retard on this system will be controlled by a small USA made brain box that is for off road ignitions. The controller also takes into account MAP, so it will work great on a turbo engine. (when these engine go into boost, they need a lot less ignition advance, or they are prone to detonation) If you look at the rotor, it has a very wide contact nose, typical of new designs with purely electronic advance. This system may also have a handful of application for naturally aspirated engines at very high altitudes. such engine need a lot of extra advance to completely burn the mixture when the pressure is down. Either way, we are now having the metal parts made, perhaps we can do a demonstration run of this at CC#28 or #29.
Above a 2007 photo and caption from our webpage. It highlights things we looked at and considered using. “Many Internet commenters falsely assume that I have only looked at one way of doing things. The photo above shows various ignition parts, some considered, some tried, some still in the works, sitting on the shelf next to my distributor machine. Seen in the photo are a low profile crab-style cap with a corrected firing order from an import; a ball bearing distributor housing from the same engine machined to fit in the Corvair case; distributor shafts from small block Chevys that have identical diameter and oil pump drive; HEI ignition system from 4.3 liter V-6, Pertronix points eliminator; Mitsubishi optical trigger; and miscellaneous other parts. We build and test an awful lot of stuff that does not make it to the discussion level. Just because we have one way of doing it that has proven to work well does not mean we don’t understand how to do it many other ways, and have considered, tested and perhaps rejected ideas brought up as new discussions on the Net.”
