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By
Phil McGarrigle (April 2004)
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BAJA
people think a little differently. Because our vehicles are designed
to go into remote places looking for off road adventure we tend to
place a high priority on reliability.
It is no fun walking out of the sand dunes and there are few garages
around where we go, so the chance to replace the points with the reliability
of solid state electronics with no wearing parts appealed to me.
I
picked up a Pertronix Ignitor kit from Intervolks and here is how
we fitted it.
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The
Packet claims "easy to install" so I read and reread the
instructions and armed with a few simple tools set out to install
the kit.
First
Step was to use the multimeter and check that the coil resistance
was greater than Three Ohms : Good 3.9 Ohms
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The
second step was to remove the distributor cap and rotor without
removing the spark plug wires from the cap. This is done by gently
prying the two spring catches with a flat bladed screw driver.
Then
we disconnect the points wire from the negative side of the coil
and remove the points, Condenser and grommet.
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This
is where we hit a snag. The screw that holds the condenser bracket
which also locks in the grommet is on the back of the distributor
body and it is nearly impossible to get a screwdriver into the correct
position to undo it. We decided to loosen the distributor clamp
and rotate the distributor to gain better access to this screw.
With
the clamp loose we were able to turn the distributor to get to this
screw.
The
rest of the job could have proceeded from this point but having
disturbed the distributor this far I decided that it would be easier
to remove it completely which gave me the opportunity to give it
a good clean at the same time.
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Here
is the distributor nice and clean and ready to accept the electronic
ignition kit. The ignitor does not require any modification to the
distributor so the original points condenser and hardware go into
the backup spare parts container.
This
lug acts as a pilot and locates in the hole in the breaker plate.
The Ignitor module is secured using the screw provided. And the
grommet is fed through the hole.
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The
magnet sleeve is placed down on the distributor shaft it locates
on the square cam face and is pressed down quite firmly. The completed
assembly then looks like this.
Now
all that remained was to refit the distributor in the car making
sure to line up the timing marks. Connect the black wire to the
negative side of the coil where the points wire came from and connect
the red wire to the other side of the coil.
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Timing
was set in the normal manner and a quick blast around the block to
see if it all works. The seat of the pants dyno reports a slight improvement
in performance, but the big grin is from knowing that the points never
have to be adjusted again. At least not in the Baja - I better keep
that dwell meter handy though for her Bug. |
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