Electronic ignition kit

[wozzer]

Hi all

I need some help with some basic questions I have regarding a new electronic ignition kit I have been fitting which I bought from simonbbc.
Now all seemed quite easy except I am now confused.
I had an original coil with an armoured casing from the + terminal to the ignition switch.
According to the instructions I just connect the two wires from the dizzy  to the coil, red to + and white to -.
My question is, as I do not have a decent wiring diagram, shouldn't i be connecting the positive from the dizzy to the original positive that was going to the original dizzy?
And does the p5b have a ballast resistor built in somewhere?
Any help will be greatly received.
Woz

[Phil Nottingham]

A P5B may or may not have a ballast resistor 2 types were used,

See SEARCH but it depends on the year and any many PO mods


This may or may not affect the operation of the electronic ignition.

However, with electronic ignition -ve is always EARTH on P5B and P5Mk3 Rovers so Coil SW is + and CB is negative *earth*

If you want my opinion having asked, forget electronic and stick with OEM points set up properly and your problems will disappear as long as the regular servicing time, as opposed to mileage, is done

Yours should NOT have any ballast.  A wiring diagram is in the late handbooks. PM me direct with own email if you wish me to send you my personal Pdf copy of this

[enigmas]

Woz, depending upon what type of electronic ignition module you have, (?) each have specific requirements but there's generally commonality with input voltages. I'm assuming you have a wiring diagram for you particular kit!

As for the input voltages from the car's wiring there's probably a ballasted wire and a full 12v feed. The ballasted wire runs the original points system once the engine is running and the full 12v feed during cranking...as the starter causes a voltage drop. The coil is matched to the ballast resistor so when the engine is running the coil receives say 8 volts. The coil has an ohm rating...they're not all the same. You need to know the coil's primary ohm rating (see below). Your kit's wiring information should state the ohm rating of the coil and the voltage that should be delivered to the coil. Use the wrong coil and feed it and the module too great a voltage and the module will overheat and fail.

The car's ballast resistor/ballasted wire is probably internal...within the loom.

You need to use a multimeter on the volts setting to check the output voltage of the feed wires to the module and the coil. Check this with the engine running...as often the output can be over 15v...and generally 14.3v (check the kit literature) is all that is required.

Depending upon the module a standard points coil of 3.4 ohms is generally fine (check though). A coil used with a ballasted system may be around 1.5 ohms. By adding the ballast wire resistance to this, for eg., 2 ohms the overall resistance is 3.5 ohms total (virtually the same as a non ballasted coil)

You need to check these things otherwise the module will be eventually destroyed due to overheating.


Checking Coil Primary resistance.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=h8vSwfnX3Xc

[petervdvelde]

Apr 14, 2018 20:19:13 GMT wozzer said:

Hi all

I need some help with some basic questions I have regarding a new electronic ignition kit I have been fitting which I bought from simonbbc.
Now all seemed quite easy except I am now confused.
I had an original coil with an armoured casing from the + terminal to the ignition switch.
According to the instructions I just connect the two wires from the dizzy  to the coil, red to + and white to -.
My question is, as I do not have a decent wiring diagram, shouldn't i be connecting the positive from the dizzy to the original positive that was going to the original dizzy?
And does the p5b have a ballast resistor built in somewhere?
Any help will be greatly received.
Woz

With the original set up zou should measure the voltage over the coil. If this is 12-14 Volt then zou have a non balasted system. If you measure 9V or lower then there is a balast resistor in your system and this resistor is not always clearly visible as it can be integrated in a wire. Their instruction is correct: connect the + wire from the ignition lock to the + of the coil and also connect the + from the dizzy to the coil and connect the - from the dizzy to the - on the coil.

I also bought a Simon BBC distributor but this started causing trouble after 2 years. Simon BBC states that original Lucas parts are used but this was not so with my distributor. I had a Range Rover distributor and wanted to swap some parts but this was not possible. In the end i fitted the entire Range rover distributor and no problems since.
Normally you cannot fit the Range Rover distributor as this has a female connection to the oil pump gear but i had fitted a larger oil pump kit and ordered this with a SD1-Range rover male connection.

What i also did was to remove the black amplifier from the distributor to a seperate heatsink on the inner wing. This is a later Discovery set up as these amplifiers do not like the high engine temperature

Peter

[petervdvelde]

another advantage of the remote installation of the amplifier is that the range of adjustment of the distributor improves as the amplifier reduces the rotation (adjustment) range

Peter