Electric Ignition, Yes or No?

[owent2005]

Hi all,

I've been considering changing my standard points ignition to the electronic upgrade for a while and thought id put it to the forum for some advice. I can manage the adjusting of the points but travelling with a young family thought it would be one less thing to be concerned with.

Ive looked on the JK website and seen the Petronix kit including the ignition coil and HT leads but am wondering firstly if i need to upgrade the coil and leads as well and secondly how good is the Accuspark stuff as its about a third of the price as the Petronix?

Any pointers or advice would be welcome,

Owen

 

[StefansBus]

I too think it's one less thing to worry about. So far (couple of trips to Italy) my Pertronix has been trouble free and I have heard mostly good things about them. The points these days are nowhere near as good as the OEM parts used to be. I can't give any first hand info on Accuspark.

What coil do you currently have? Most important is correct resistance. Don't know by heart what the Pertronix needs but that's an easy google. I have a blue Beru coil (not the cheaper oil filled one) and Bosch ignition leads. Works very well.

 

[montypsx]

Hi pal I've got all three I'm running a Petronix dizzy,coil and 8mm leads with iridium plugs and it's amazing but I only put it in cause I got it really really cheap. I was running a standard dizzy with points but I didn't think the build quality of the points very good and I had to adjust them at the beginning of each season so I swapped to accukuspark and ran it for three years with no problems and I still carry it as my spare. Hope this helps

 

[KateLovesPurple]

I've got an EMPI one in my bus, must have been there at least 10 years now with no problems at all! Had a pertronix one in my fastback too. Well worth fitting one. Definitely fit and forget. Don't forget to retime your engine though afterwards as it will very likely be out to start with.

 

[tmcg]

I have an accuspark unit that I put in after asking a similar question on here back in Feb. Hasn’t missed a beat since running much smoother, tried the accuspark coil but felt it ran better with a decent Bosch one. Plus with the price difference between that and the Petronix kit I keep a spare accuspark unit in the glovebox incase it does go pop.


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[tmcg]

Also a handy article on Bosch coils I used deciding on new Bosch coil to go with accuspark unit http://www.ratwell.com/technical/BlueCoil.html as said above need to get correct resistance for the spark unit.


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[67westy]

I've had an accuspark in for about 3 years now with no issues

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[Happystamps]

Accuspark ignition- big yes. Points are pants nowadays, or maybe it's just that my points cam is corroded. But for £40, it's ace.
Replacing your coil or plug leads? You don't need to do that, and most likely there's nothing wrong with what you've got. Test the resistances of your plug leads if you like, and the coil too, but if there's no problem with running then they're likely fine, just re-use them.

 

[Mags]

I run Pertronix in another old car and it's been fine for many years. I fitted an Empi unit to my bus when I first bought it (12+ years ago) and have only recently discovered it was failing by cutting out and randomly working again when it felt like it, I went back to points just to prove this out and get me running again but I'll be back to electronic when I can, hopefully a 123 Dizzy next year. Incidentally my bus ran better as soon as I went back to points but I'm assuming the Empi unit was failing in general.

 

[owent2005]

Thanks for the advice, i think I'm gonna go with the Accuspark ignition and see how it fares from there.

 

[Hubs]

The Accuspark units are improved over their earlier models which could stay switched on if ignition was left on and the engine wasn't running. Which caused them to cook themselves.
They then wouldn't fail totally, but partially once they warmed up. Pain in the Ass intermittent fault to find.
All good now