Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Spitfire Electronic ignition Part 1

I've been looking at electronic ignitions and there various merits.

Lumenition - loads around, expensive and plenty of rumors of failures.

MSD - the daddy of ignitions but v expensive, good selection of good high powered coils.

Magnetronic and similar in dizzyunits - Take care of spark scatter but are generally limited to coil switching capability of 4 A. The exception is Aldons ignitor 2.

So where do i go next well the answer is i would like the MSD setup. However i have found i cheap source for a dizzy sensor. for £12 delivered ! amazing as the nearest competitors price is £67. Now the drawback as stated above is that it can only handle 4 amps.

I have just seen a report on the no brand module i have bought, there might be an issue with phasing of the rotor in the dizzy- i will check it out when it arrives.

The solution comes in the form of a Vellman kit supplied by Maplin. This is meant to make point setup last longer by not putting the same amount of current through the points. The dizzy module works in the same way as points so no problems. The only issue is the 4 Amp one.

The clever bits is that the kit needs to be assembled and some components changed To cope with a higher amperage rating. In all fairness Vellman say that there kit can handle 4 amps the components are rated to 10 amps. Now they must have tested there units and concluded they need the extra headroom. So i will follow suit i need 8 amps capability so i need to respec the vellman unit to cope with nearer 20 amps.

The reason for going to the effort make these changes are so that i can keep the standard Ballast resistor circuit. Simply because a boost function for better starting is definitely the way to go.

If this works i will be offering for sale complete systems for use on lucas 45 and 25 dizzys.

So at the rate i work that probably never ! DOh

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