What sort of crazy ignition gimmick is this?

-
T

timk225

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jun 2, 2024
Messages
62
Reaction score
43
Location
Pittsburgh
I'm getting my newly acquired 1973 Duster ready to start up again, and part of that is taking off all the stupid junk the previous owner put on. He obviously had access to a J.C. Whitney catalog, and more money than brains. Among the things this car has are:

1. Rear air shocks with an on board air compressor that still runs when the button is pushed.
2. An add-on cruise control system.
3. Under front bumper KC headlights, because you never know when the 2 much bigger stock headlights just won't be enough light.
4. A 3 layer insulated fuel line from the pump to the carburetor, with plastic, fiberglass, and aluminum foil levels.
5. A silver box on the firewall that I haven't even identified yet as to what it does. Haven't tried to open it yet.

Then there's this gimmick. It has 2 power transistors and heat sinks, so it definitely does something involving power. The only wires leading to or from it go to each side of the ignition coil. 2 wires to one side, 2 to the other. I'm guessing it has claims of MORE POWER MORE MILEAGE in its advertisements.

It also has a red button, is the button supposed to be pushed in or left out for the car to run?

Ever seen one of these?

Ignition 1.jpg


Ignition 2.jpg
 
So did my Dad on his 68 Coronet R/T.
Capacitive Discharge Ignition. They still sell them on E bay and Amazon .
 
It might be good for one thing............before you toss it. If you decide to use a GM HEI for ignition, that is a decent heat sink, and after stripping the components, likely has a flat rear side
 
They were decent for what they were, not a gimmick at the time.
Lots of versions of basically the same unit- Delta MK10, Heathkit and Archer (Radio Shack) both had kits for the do-it-yourselfer...
Here's the Archer kit I built and ran on my GTS when I was 16:
1722634493137.png
 
Biggest problem was getting a tach to operate reliably. These are the reason that my 70 440-6 RR got a Jones Motrola mechanical tach. I was second owner, and the original owner (still a friend of mine to this day) had pulled the tik tok tach out for warranty, and finally jammed a Sun in there. Fits right in with friction, LOL. I took that out and placed the Jones tach up against the cutout in the cluster from the rear, and make some hardware to clamp it in place. This was a B&W face and very nearly matched the speedo.
 
Yep it's a Delta mark 10, got 2 of them, still work. Old man said the points would last way longer with that on there
 
What about the red button? What is it for, and should it be pushed in or left out to make the car run?
 
If I remember correctly, it just activates and deactivates the Capacitor Discharge function. It should run in either position. You would deactivate the unit in order to set the timing- there was a chance the higher output could burn out some of the older timing lights, especially the inline ones (as opposed to ones with inductive inputs, some of the early ones of which were also kind of susceptible).
 
A friend of mine, later an electrical engineer, outsmarted himself with one of these. He knew the cap (condenser) in the distributor was no longer needed so he pulled it out. And of course at some point the CD unit died. He could not simply switch it over, without a cap. Some did not have a switch. They rather had terminal boards at the coil, and you could undo them and reconnect the original wires.

OP I WOULD NOT run that thing judging from outward appearance. And it is very likely some of the caps are bad/ leaky. Those essentially work like an electronic photoflash. The two big transistors are part of an inverter that takes 12V chops it up, raises it to a high voltage and rectifies it, then charges a capacitor up. When the thing fires (SCR) the cap discharged a big pulse through the coil.
 
If you decide to toss it, send it my way- I would be glad to post a tear down here of what's inside and how it works. PM me if interested.
 
timk225 said:
1. Rear air shocks with an on board air compressor that still runs when the button is pushed.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, baby. I always wanted an onboard compressor, operable from the front seat ........... in 1972 or so, lol.

and cruise-control would have been soooo welcome.

My cars usually got hi-powered Halogens, aux halogens above the bumper, and fogs hanging below.

One time; I was cruising thru the foothills on a dark and snowy winter's evening, on my way to celebrate Christmas at my folks, usually about a 75 minute drive from home; with my alternator working overtime. When all of a sudden a herd of horses appeared in my lights! on the road!!
Well, no problem, a lil brakes and a lil sawing on the Steering wheel, and we rolled on by, marveling at the brutes running in the dark, all wet from the melting snow.
Without those lights, I'm sure I wouldda wrote my car off just then, and maybe killed a horse or three, and Ida had to sit in the dead car until morning, with dead and/or dying horses crying in the dark.
But worst of all, is that my wife and three kids were in the car with me, and in those days, carseats were optional.
Hyup, mounting those lights was certainly worth the time and money that time! When I eventually parted that car out, I kept those life-savers.
 
Last edited:
Someone mentioned that this CDI ignition would use a points distributor to trigger it. I checked today, and the car has the stock electronic ignition distributor, no points.

Looking at it some more, how is this thing supposed to work? It receives +/- 12 volts from the power wires bolted to the coil, it takes and supercharges that power somehow, and feeds it right back to the very same connections it got the 12 volt power from in the first place?

Each coil terminal has a little metal plate bolted to it, so more wires can be attached. Now if that plate were somehow installed to separate the power, then I could see it working, but if it is just a little metal tab, then I don't know if this thing is even wired right.

I checked the factory ECU today, since there was a lot of gunk below it all over the inner fender. I think I have to change the ECU. The story I got is the car sat for around 20 years in storage, maybe more.

ecu 1.jpg
 
Last edited:
First, the inner and outer coil terminal connections on those terminal pieces are insulated from each other. Those may be "chunks" of circuit board. What they have done is to provide an easy place to separate the original wiring, and to route the CD system to the coil

So the part of the terminal board that bolts to the coil is the fired high voltage pulse output of the CD. As I explained earlier, this works very similar to a photoflash

The original car coil wires fasten to the outside terminals of the board, and are routed back to the CD unit. IF you examine, you'll see that the cabling going from the board terminal pieces to the CD is 4 wires

Now, what you just posted is a "thing" I had not counted on.

Originally, these were designed to be triggered by points as I said. What they are doing, is the same 12V power on the original coil+ terminal is routed to the CD. The BLACK (I think) that originally went from the OEM breakerless box MIMICKS the points action, that is, the breakerless distributor triggers the OEM box and switches the coil on/off just like it had points. So that black? wire coming from the OEM breakerless is triggering the CD

That box, now leaking, may or may not have a problem.

I would connect the original OEM coil wiring back to the coil and see if it will make spark. As I said earlier, I WOULD NOT attempt to use that CD box for a number of reasons

Here is a poor quality crop from that link I provided earlier:

Selectric Typewriter Museum - Cars - Delta Mark Ten B CDI Ignition

The Fantastic Informative page of Jim Forbes
selectric.org

You can sort of see the separation of the coil terminals.

What they are not grapically depicting, here, is that the OEM wiring connects to the OUTER terminals. The power from the "run" wire connects to the far left, and the lead from either points, or (in your case) the swithing wire from the OEM breakerless connects to far right. THESE ARE FOUR INSULATED terminals.

instructions02.jpg


The Great Big Red Print from Zed L land has not been here, I see.
 
Last edited:
67Dart, thanks for the clarification and details on the CDI system. My only question at this point is the red button on the CDI box. Someone mentioned having it pushed in or out enables / disables the CDI, and leaves it to run on the stock system, but I'm not sure which is which.

I went and got some gas today (ethanol free, I wanted to start the car off right), and tomorrow or the next day, I will hook up a 1 gallon gas can to the fuel pump, crank it, and get the carburetor filled with fuel. Then reinstall the spark plugs and see what happens. I don't plan to run it for long, just to see if there's a running engine there.
 
Today I fired up the engine for the first time. I took a 1 gallon gas can and ran a hose into the fuel pump, cranked it to fill the carburetor, put the spark plugs in, and it started up right away! Engine sounds pretty quiet.

I tried running it both with the red button in and out, it ran both ways. So I will set about disconnecting this CDI BS, I won't have stuff like that on the car.
 
MadScientistMat already called it a few posts above, unless he doesn't want it. I'll go pull it off in the next few days and make sure the engine still starts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top