Technical 1932 Ford model 18 "tall coil tribute" with helmet distributor

Very well done sir. I threw my 37-41 helmet distributor into the woods after COUNTLESS hours of frustration. This set up is fantastic
Thank you for posting.

 

Thanks, great info. & much appreciated.

 

Here the distributor LH


and here RH

 

well of course you are good at this--you are from where scintilla comes from!!--BEAUTY job there!!

 

Amazing tech thread. If you ever decide to start building and selling these, please let me know.

 

Oh yeah! Scintilla magnetos were made less than 100 miles from my home, right in the Jura ridge (now called Watch Valley)!

 

Below you can see the empty "cup" of the Ford helemt distributor. The whole new Stromberg advance module has to fit inside. Luckily, its maximum diameter of the advance weights (@ 30°, when weights are centrifugally at thair maximum deployment) is just fitting inside the Ford cup. I "won" the missing 5 mm by replacing the baseplate (custom made).


The result with all parts in place. Neat ! Almost like a factory part! ...and here, with the black (bespoke) baseplate installed. The E-Fire module or the lumenition module is / are screwed ont this baseplate. The original Ford snapring is retained. Only missing on the photo, the 3D printed 8 blades chopper.

Below is a close photo of the 3D printed "chopper". It slides snug over the 8 cams (1" type) of the stock Ford unit.
There were at least 2 different Ford cams dimentions

 

Very well thought out, very nice workmanship! Thanx for sharing.
Tom

 

yes, Wheeldog: i spent too much time on my stock helmet too! Without even mentioning the hassle to set up points! Now okay, I have some electronics on my car, what did not want at first... however, it's limitated to that part of the car... worth this small exception. And damned: YES, the engine revs now as it should. At last!

 

Hello there again. I list here the main parts that you need:
square drive (to drive the Autometer angle from the tip of the distributor shaft:


part 5392 from Summit Racing

and the brass drive adapter that you slide inside the hole made in the tip of the distributor shaft:


also from Summit.
Then the advance unit from Stromberg97



if you select the Lumenition ignition, you may delete the magnetic sensor (red rectangular thing above), and in any way, you don't use, of course, the red chopper that comes along. All these parts directly from Stromberg97 in UK

Then you need the brush to make contact between coil and rotor:



and of course a good 12V coil that matches your E-Fire or Lumenition ohms requirements. In my case (I am european...) I use Bosch # 0 221 119 027 but they become hard to find in original units made in Germany...

Now for the coil cover, I wanted to use black/brown bakelite to mimmick the original Ford coil.


However, I feard that the heat transfer and dissipation generated by the coil would not happen. So I went for a plain aluminum bar 60mm (2.36") that I milled to match.

...with the magnet glued inside the end of the hole, so that it sticks to the coil, as described in page 1.

Of course you need small bits, like the little brass plug that goes inside the coil HT hole, the small tension spring, the polyoxymethylen plug for the Lucas brush, and a steel plate to create the support of the optronic / magnetic sensor, along with matching screws... and the Autometer angle drive listed above.

 

...and of course, you need a couple of good

in perfect working order.

 

Great work done by great hands!

 

Amazing idea to make this modification and beautifully done. I may have missed it, what is the domed aluminum coil cover made from? Thanks!

 

Hi 1937Coupe, it's been milled from a billet aluminum plain bar. I have a very good heat dissipation, since the Bosch coil body is fitted "snug" inside...

 

...now I plan to rebuild a whole new unit, incorporating an electronic advance curve set-up (via Smartphone), deleting the mechanical advance, but still with the mechanical rev counter pick.up and the tall coil look...

 

@gretaa, thanks for sharing, I’m looking forward to seeing how you do it.

 

Wow
For a second I thought I had found a photo that I had been looking for for quite some time, pretty sure it was from a magazine, but......it was actually a crank driven/ remote cable driven generator hidden under the car.
Anyone heard of this?

 

That's a Gorgeous coupe nice build. Something to be proud of.

 

Very well executed! I guess Switzerland isn’t all about chocolate, cheese, watches, banks, UN,...!