Electronic Ignition

[19agin]

Many of you have installed electronic ignitions. I am curious as to which set up / brand is easiest, or best. My '71 has a 2v 360. Pretty much just a daily driver. No need for hot rodding. I've heard a lot about Pertronix, but I have also seen Hot Spark and others. Suggestions?? - Thanks

[Mancar1]

I have Petronix on my 68, 390. Probably not the best of the best, but price is right, and sure is an easy install. Has worked great for me, no problems. I carry the old points in my tool box, may never need them, but hey nothing wrong with a backup plan. No matter what you run.

[fitzwell]

Duraspark II.
Get a dist from a 75-76 390,
& the wiring harness. Change out the coil to a TFI style unit, eliminate the ballast resistor and you're done. Painless also offers a harness for the conversion if the salvage yard unit is ravaged, part # 30812. Nice thing about this swap is, if you're in BFE, & anything in the ignition system takes a dump, parts are available anywhere.

[ForingaMex]

That's what I did and have no regrets. Sure, if one of the other fancy setups would turn my truck into a hotrod and bring my mpg down donsiderably I'd consider it as well.

[timmytim]

Duraspark II.
Get a dist from a 75-76 390,
& the wiring harness. Change out the coil to a TFI style unit, eliminate the ballast resistor and you're done. Painless also offers a harness for the conversion if the salvage yard unit is ravaged, part # 30812. Nice thing about this swap is, if you're in BFE, & anything in the ignition system takes a dump, parts are available anywhere.

Im going to do this duraspark conversion soon and was wondering how the tfi coil eliminates the ballast resistor?

[fitzwell]

[Im going to do this duraspark conversion soon and was wondering how the tfi coil eliminates the ballast resistor?

The TFI coil is designed to run on 12v all the time. If you do a DII conversion with a factory style harness, there is a red, or red/green wire that is the resistance wire, from the ignition switch to the B+ side of the coil. Simply eliminate that wire & run a 14 ga wire from the switch straight to the hot side of the coil. Get a coil & bracket from just about any 86 up v8 ford application. Don't forget to get the connector for the coil as well. Cut as much of the coil onnection wire from the donor vehicle as possible, just to make the final connections that much easier...

[towtruckerfour]

I have been curious on this myself. I have the electronic ignition in my 68 and want to make sure I have it right. The previous owner put it in but some of the wiring wasn't right which I have fixed. They wired the temp and oil sensor wires to the coil. I've heard people talk about stronger coils and I have just a stock coil. Is that ok to run or am I losing power because of it? Here are pictures of what I have. The truck runs good but seems to be lacking power in my opinion.

The ignition box is a carqwest model

Does the little condensor need to be there?
Thanks for any help on this as I am still figuring this system out. I do like it though.

[fitzwell]

Tow, how did they wire the temp & oil sender to the coil??? Those are both ground signals to the cluster. If it's a stock type DurasparkII coil, it should be marked for use with external resistor. Check the + side of the coil with a voltmeter, it should read full voltage in the "crank" position, 9-10 volts running. Iff'n it were me, i'd change to the TFI style coil, as stated above. Maybe it's just me, but when i made the swap, the idle sure seemed a lot cleaner. One last thing i just thought about, if you do the DII/TFI swap, play with the gap on the plugs. Both my 302's seem to like .048-.050. On an FE, i'd start at .045 & see what it likes from there

as always...

[towtruckerfour]

Hey Fitzwell. I appreciate your two cents on this. The pigtail that comes out of the firewall had all three wires going to the coil. I was trying to find the temp wire and found what they did. The motor is a 352 and runs good. I have read where people changed to like the flamethrower coil and was just curious. I will have to check the voltage and see what I have.