Hi found this today want to use as a test.. Any idea on brand? Old crane maybe? and thoughts on what the wiring should be? The grey goes into the optical pickup via connector- Red = 12v+ Black = ground Purple = coil -? OR Red = 12v+ black = coil - purple = coil +?
I'm thinking mid 60's aftermarket Transistor ignition conversion. Maybe early 70's. You would see them in the adds in Popular Mechanics and some of the car magazines. I remember seeing one or two installed by owners of cars I worked on. They usually pointed them out and bragged about putting them on. Not used by hot rodders but the dudes who bought trinkets claiming to give you better gas mileage or performance.
Did you remove the ECU from the mounting plate its bolted to and check the other side to see if it has a name plate with a model number ?
Knowing what the distributor fits might help folks figure things out. Some of the early aftermarket units did resemble the early Mopar units. This being the first edition Mopar electronic module. There were some home brew conversions that used the Mopar module and pickup that worked pretty good though.
I remember these from the early/mid 70s, the first relatively inexpensive aftermarket electronic ignition conversions. Sold under various brand names including some 'house brands' for about $50-$70, used a LED, photo receptor and shutter wheel to trigger. I had one that was identical except for the box color. They didn't prove to be all that reliable and disappeared after several years. Usual failure was the optical trigger, although the boxes would occasionally go bad. The one I had would go open intermittently, unfortunately only when the wife was driving it and the only diagnostic clue she would give me was 'it just stopped'. Not much help when I showed up for rescue and the car would start right up and run perfectly... LOL. But it finally did it while I was driving and blew both mufflers off the car, that made it pretty obvious it was an ignition issue. You should have heard the 'I told you so's... LOLOL. New mufflers and put the points back, problem fixed. I steered clear of electronic ignitions for a long time before going back in the early 90s.
mid 70s JC Whitney catalog page. This is a magnetic one...but yeah, there were cheapies avialable that had limited reliability
thanks fellas - great info as usual. This came on an inline GM 4 (nova 2 engine) .. it was in a boat at some point.. Any ideas on the wiring? Ill test it this morning and update - I do have a box of points and 2 spare distributors. I need to run in a new FT cam and getting weak spark on the points i have in there now despite sanding the 2 surfaces etc.. just mucking about .. it does resemble the chrysler stuff we have in our motorhome (and what ive seen on crusader boat engines form the 70s)... Also - no parts numbers i can see- i did make out a square where a sticker once was a long time ago.. not even a number stamped anywhere...
The Jalopy Journal
