Technical Why did people modify v12 Zephyr distributors on Flathead V8's?

Why did people modify v12 Zephyr distributors to put on Flathead V8's? Just curious.

 

I have heard about this being done myself. I am wondering if it has something to do with the fact the Zephyr dizzy is really set up to fire two banks of six...two coils, two condensors, two sets of points, etc?

All I can say is that it is hard to find any body that can set them up. I was fortunate to have just discovered a real whiz-bang guy that did a great job on my V-12. He did say that points are simply impossible to find. But he knows a guy that rebuilds the coils and uses some sort of modern components.

 

Bob,

This is something we can do no problem , we do a ton of flatheads and do the Lincoln as well.........be glad to help in the future.....

 

I was wondering why people did that too.....was reading an article lately that showed a car with a converted over v-12 dizzy. Maybe it was in Rodder's Journal?

 

I have one of these as well.....Looks like I'll be sending it your way....

 

Geez Jim, I feel bad that I didn't check with you first.

But I wasn't certain what the problem was, other than very weak spark on one bank. It was nice to deliver the car one day and pick it up the next...running good.

Hell, I could have just hauled it to Speedway, IN and hung out with the good folks in Indy for a day.

dammit

 

Ya I have a couple of converted ones too. I believe it was done for the double points and double coil. Not sure what the "big gain" would be mine have brass sheet metal soldered to some of the terminal to make the contact spots fire on 4 cyls per cap instead of six. Then they just left some wires off! It looks cool on a motor being big and all! Besides that I wounder if the advance curve was the gain? Wish someone would chime in on that!
Dave Hitch
FBBF

 

Stupid question...why do the coils matter?

 

it was the "HOT" set up back in the 40's....before Kong and the others got started...

 

OK...in the '30's and '40's, coils were pretty feeble. The '32 Ford with 8 cylinders and high RPM capability by the standards of the day was pushing the limits of ignition...most 8, 12, and 16 cylinder cars of the day solved this with dual coil distributors, each coilffired half the cylinders, alternating around the firing order to give max dwell time.
2 coils were too expensive for a low price car then...every nickel counted...and Ford got its ignition working by using Mallory dual point tech to extend dwell using a single coil. Still a much more sophisticated and expensive ignition than other cheap cars...
Racers soon ran this setup beyond its limits, and frequently had to use industrial engine mag setups from Vertex or adapted other systems like Wico to extend high RPM firing.
12 cylinder Lincoln Zephyrs had dual coil distribs that would bolt onto a Ford AFTER numerous mods to convert the firing cycle from the 60 degree based engine to the 90 degree flathead...
There were BUNCH of different schools of thought on the conversion, and some very different choices in combining the bits from '36-49 LZ and '37-41 Ford distributors.
Caps OR rotors had to be altered to reac at 90 degrees, Foed cam was cut to 4 lobes for the dual setup, etc.
THis allowed full dual coil operation, with alternating use of coils for alternate cylinders in firibg order, allowing major extension of dwell and hence happy operation at high speeds.
All this stuff is cool nostalgia fussing now, because modernish coils have no trouble even in single point guise firing 8 cylinders at speeds beyond what is needed.
If you look around, half the LZ distributors at swap meets are actually V8 conversions, and nearly every one has some design differences from the last one you found...

 

My LZ-V8 distributor has the rotor modified to hit the stock LZ caps. There are little T tops added to the rotor tips. Looks to be a manufactured conversion (Spalding?), not a backyard type, as the tips are nicely made. But no tag to tell who did it.

I've got a ton of stock LZ distributors I've picked up over the years, and thought some day I'd try the bridge-the-gap style conversion as Studhud has above. But soldering on 70 year old worn brass terminals sounds risky.

 

The two basic ways...Moon and some others soldered curved brass strips to the cap terminals arcing around to make up the rotational distances, jigged into place by tin can and rubber band during soldering...others slit the tips of the rotor contacts radially and soldered curved strips there...both allow a good way to control spacing between contacts, usedful because you will likely be cleaning up ancient LZ parts rather than using new ones.
Another whole style of conversion exists, but I have not actually found one: '37 Ford distrib and caps with adaptor to mount the LZ coils, don't know if they adapted LZ rotor or had a special one...
Most failed to find a way to use an excellent LZ feature, the double breaker plate allowing dwell and timing to be set separately on the two sides of the system for optimum tuning. Most used a variety of now hard to find points...anyone sane trying this should try to use the LZ plate and adapt to some common point set!

 

Skip Haney rebuilt v-12 coils for me with modern guts so I may go this route eventually if for no other reason than its just another cool , period correct speed item

 

Slacker.

 

Thanks for all the info Bruce!

 

HHmmm I was looking at getting a HC dual coil from a friend as well. Why are they paperweights....just because of modern stuff?

 

The '49-53 distributor UNDER the H&C dual coil remains a piece of junk with worthless advance...so the conversion using that is of little use for performance. The early Ford and Lincoln distributors provioded a good basis for modification with an excellent advance mechanism....

 

I added a few pics so we all know what were talking about here. Pictured are the two most common methods of converting the V12 for V8 use.

My opinion is: if your building or restoring period correct pre-war hot rod with a Ford V8 then your choices are limited to the Zephyr V12 conversion distributor and there was only the Spalding Bros. before the war, the Meyer Manual advance system, the Lucas available on English Fords, the Robert Bosch magneto, very pricey at the time and usually found of race engines like the Millers, Railtons etc. and lastly some exotic conversion for dual plugs like a Nash Twin 8 conversion as available from R&R Manufacturing.

Mags were pretty rare and I haven't seen much mention of a V8 in any of the early SCTA or Throttle publication before the war. I have heard Scintilla made an angle drive for their mag before the war but I have yet to actually see the print ad for it or mention of a racer running it in print. I also haven't seen a pre-war Scintilla V8 mag, yet.

I also included pics of some other early pre-war set-ups.

The Ronco is the earliest V8 Ford mag I have seen, it is not pre-war. The Nash Twin Eight angle drive may not be pre-war either although the person I got it from swears up and down it is but I have my doubts.

All that being said, the stock Ford V8 distributor even in its later crab cap design, with the divorced coil, just wouldn't provide enough spark as tuners began running the V8 above 4500 rpm.
I have read about guys going to dual batteries to up the voltage to 12 volts but then the point bounce becoming an issue. That is why the better V12 conversion use the Bendix points or the Delco high speed points that were available before the war.
FYI the Spalding's were gauranteed to 8000 rpm even in the pre-war ads.

Let's face it most guys don't turn the wick up on their flatheads anyway so if your just driving your flathead around and you don't turn it beyond 4000 rpm you can get away with a '42 and later crab cap style dist. or of course any of the aftermarket stuff.
If you are one of those who winds the hell out of your flattie I'm preaching to the choir, then your building a flathead that just happens to be a race motor and that means accurate timing or BANG! I fought a Zephyr dist and many of the other conversion before tearing the Zephyr apart. My first upgrade was to convert the breakers back to the double adjustable design of the V12 and to gut the coil. I then used the breakers to trigger a digital, programmable MSD pro box and two blaster coils mounted remotely. Which I then upgraded to dual coil packs that gave me more adjustability and I was able to 86 the Zephyr rotor; but it is a pain to hide the packs out of sight. That system worked great and it had multi step retard, rev and launch controls as well as other features I didn't use.

All that is in a packing box now, as I finally switch over to a pre-war dual plug set-up.

 

I believe tha vertex style mag was available in the early 1930's...I have a brochure somewhere advertising one angle (straight up) for 1932 and a slanted one for 1933-5 even including a new contact plate for original ignition switch. The 1935 cutoff date would mean it was published in '35, since that would also fit later ones.
I have a dual coil (not twin plug) conversion somewhere that is a Nash-like conventional distrib mounted straight out of an early V8 base, I haven't seen the thing in years, but it's somewhere in the heap o' junk.

 

You do a whole lot of preaching before you break your own rules. Not really the stickler for details you started out to be, huh?

 

One of my favorite subjects. I have some LZ distributors and parts that I will be doing this conversion to. Might make a neat tech article, no?

Z

 

In reality problably too much of a stickler. But I guess I got to wordy and or I didn't explain myself clearly enough. Last line reads "All that is in a packing box now, as I finally switch over to a pre-war dual plug set-up." When I ran it with that late stuff it never went to a show or had pics of it with that stuff on it and I was only passing along the info for anyone else who might have been wondering if it could work.

I went through all that with the late ignition stuff so I could have the flexibilty in the timing curve as I dialed in the carbs and igntion for nitro. Now that I know that I am in the ball park I can add the dual plugs and the Nash distibutor with a curve that is pretty close, I hope. And all that was done so I could drive it just as Belond did with Nitro in the tank. Although at 20% nitro, 20% gas, 60% methanol it really didn't turn out to be anymore exciting then 100% VP M5.

Sorry for any misunderstanding, and I apologize for jacking your thread Hitchhiker, hope you got the info you were looking for though.

 

Regarding prewar Vertex Scintilla, this spring i found a 1937 Vertex mag on angledrive for flathead Ford in a barn just 2 minutes from my house here in Norway, with 26 degrees advance mechanism, oval brass tag etc. They`re out there.

 

I had Skip Haney convert my 6 volt coil to a 12 volt for my V12 engine so far so good Skip does nice work.

Frenchy

 

Thanks for the great thread hitchhiker.
Are those top plastic parts hard to get? mine is missing.

 

awesome thread! i'm going to have to be on the look out for LZ distributors now!

 

Guys, i just did a dual coil flathead with a lincoln rotor and a machined cam for the twin coil check it out over at the Ford Barn:

http://www.fordbarn.com/forum/showthread.php?t=56589

We are also in progress of doing the dual coil 16 cylinder ( making it electronic) for another customer....

 

Thanks bubba!

 

Bubba and 777, you guys made this an awesome thread! Lots of good and useful explanation, photos and history. If more HAMB threads were like this one,I might actually, eventually, learn something about old cars. Thank you.

 

I have encountered several different modes of V-12 to V-8 conversion, and several others that I own either complete or in fragmented form:
A postwar type based on 59 rather than 21A...it converts the stock cap and rotor and so avoids all the H&C stuff, which is pretty well impractical due to failures of the original cap material and near total lack of replacements. The 59 type is probably the easiest for home conversion IF the extra ring in cap doesn't lead to crossfire...
I have seen but never bought V8-V12 crossbreeds that used the 78 housing instead of the Lincoln one, with an adaptor plate to install the Lincoln coil on top
I have an odd and probably old conversion done with unknown non-Ford iron dual coil V8 distributor body and cap somehow adapted to a normal Ford helmet stump...this one is straight drive like Ford, not an angle drive
The converted V-12's exist in at least two general styles that are apparently commercial (maybe early Ducoil, the commoner one is like Moon's conversion) and an infinity of home brews. One I have retains the adjustable Lincoln breaker plate, an excellent idea allowing timing and dwell to be fully separately adjustable for complete synchronization.
This stuff is no longer justified by function, as single modern coils can go much higher than a flathead can spin, but are realdamnneat just the same.