32-36 Ford Divers Bell " something new ?"

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

This forum teaches me something new every day and i love it . Most addictive thing i have done for years.
A customer sent me a email the other day discussing the 36 Ford divers bell distributor using the spring dual points and the adjustment holes to set the dwell in the lower section of the distributor.
In the conversation, he said in the old days we used to just cut the "make" set of points off , install a good condensor and adjut the "break" set and they would run good forever !!!!
The longer i thought about it the better it sounded so the last couple days i have been working on a core and today got it done and tested on the machine.
WOW i have been calling it the "Interceptor project" after the days with real police intercepter cars etc.
Per the pic the make set is the set on the left and i cut that set off at the contact strap , removed the pins and lower contact unit from plate , bead blasted and painted it black primer....(ever tell ya how much i hate rust inside a distributor?)
Cleaned and lubed all parts , placed on distributor machine set the dwell at 30 degrees ( just like a chevy v8) and spun er up. Ran it at 5000 plus for a long time!!! The 40A distributors have 11-12 degrees of advance and come in at approx 2000 rpm , should be pretty perfect.
This one i boxed up for a customer and i have another one going to Newport .
Nice kit for sure , wires , coil, resistor and distributor ready to run.
I am calling this the "interceptor Distributor Kit.
What ya think..........????????












See ya at Newport ........

[Henry/Kokomo]

Simpler is almost always better, especially if it works well. I like it.

[Fe26]

I love it, what's old is new again, those 'old farts' from the 'old days' might just be onto something after all.

[Tinker]

I like it! I just need to personally test it

[ken ct]

Bubba,i will make one and test run on my 36 when its back on the road. Sounds like a good project to play with. ken ct . Thanks for the idea.

[John Kennedy]

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I like it!

[jimTN]

That should work all the way up to 48 since according to the Heyer book and Ford SB, the make and break principle was the same.

[Ralph Moore]

I've seen quite a few old Ford distributors for sale with "missing parts", ie. the "make" set of points you removed. Now I think they were probably missing on purpose.

Now this changes everything, I have been scrounging for crab distributors in order to send to you for a rebuild. This would replace my Helmet dist that came with one of my early flatheads which initially I wanted to use, I even have a cam for it.
Decisions, decisions.

[ken ct]

Bubba,would this also work for the 37-41 dist and the crab up to 48 as someone else asked??? ken ct. Is it really necessory to remove the point post and mount for the screw contact part?? ken ct.

[Ol' Ron]

The best part of this hobby is trying new things, some work and some don't. The ones that don't are the real teachers.

[Bruce Lancaster]

...and this is certainly something easy enough to do and road test!
The purpose of the dual points was to extend dwell and so give more charging time to the coil.
Coils of the '30's were ragged edge on the '32's because there were 8 cylinders and an engine that could rev higher than most others. I think all other 8 cylinder (and up) cars of the day used dual coils to allow proper function, and Ford used Mallory's ideas (see patent for first generation 1932 distributor) to do the job with a single coil...very important on a low cost car in a depression to keep costs down.
Since maybe the 1950's, coils have greatly improved and the original need ceased to exist, as with a modernish coil firing 8 cylinders at maybe 5,000 on single points is no big deal. Many higher performance cars used dual point tech up into the '60's, but all of them were substantially higher revving than most flatheads, cars like FI Corvettes.

[Walt Dupont--Me.]

I did that yr's ago with a crab. I didn't have a machine to test it with but on my street engine it run fine. Walt

[37ford4dr]

so whats the advantage to have only one set of points? i guess i am missing something. are you saying that modern coils have made the dual points unnecessary?

[Bruce Lancaster]

There's no advantage here if system works...
If engine gets good spark under all circumstances, you have a good system regardless of the headcount in there.
If you have ignition breakdown and missing at high RPM, the extra dwell of dual points will extend the range of a marginal coil.
A flathead has less RPM range and less compression than modern cars in general, and coils have greatly improved, so likely a good modern coils will be perfectly happy with only one point set.
Maybe the only reason to keep the old stuff is the aesthetics of clever design and intricate mechanism, and your own reaction to the joy and/or pain of checking dwell vs gap three different ways...
The whole shebang is an excercise in entertainment, really, when the modern world got GM HEI's that would fire anything and do so for 200,000 miles without a sneeze fully a quarter century ago!

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

Originally Posted by ken ct

Bubba,would this also work for the 37-41 dist and the crab up to 48 as someone else asked??? ken ct. Is it really necessory to remove the point post and mount for the screw contact part?? ken ct.

Probably not necessary , however the orginal guy stated they put a condensor inside where the points used to be.

I found very little room there and decided instead to mount the condensor on the adapter plate.
I use a vertex magneto ( .40 mfd) condensor on these for less arching and long point life. These are expensive but worth the money i believe...

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

Originally Posted by Bruce Lancaster

There's no advantage here if system works...
If engine gets good spark under all circumstances, you have a good system regardless of the headcount in there.
If you have ignition breakdown and missing at high RPM, the extra dwell of dual points will extend the range of a marginal coil.
A flathead has less RPM range and less compression than modern cars in general, and coils have greatly improved, so likely a good modern coils will be perfectly happy with only one point set.
Maybe the only reason to keep the old stuff is the aesthetics of clever design and intricate mechanism, and your own reaction to the joy and/or pain of checking dwell vs gap three different ways...
The whole shebang is an excercise in entertainment, really, when the modern world got GM HEI's that would fire anything and do so for 200,000 miles without a sneeze fully a quarter century ago!

Correct is all respects. I think the over all simplicity got the best of me

[ken ct]

Thanks for the info Bubba. ken ct.

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

Originally Posted by 37ford4dr

so whats the advantage to have only one set of points? i guess i am missing something. are you saying that modern coils have made the dual points unnecessary?

The biggest advantage i see is the fact that you only have to deal with one set of contacts.
I agree with Bruce if the system is working correctly there would be very little reason to change anything.

Yes modern coils have certaintly made ignition systems better. I try to date auto changes . In the late 30s if you needed more or better spark you could:
1-Use a better coil with increased windings
2-Raise the battery voltage ( remove the resistor or use a 8 volt battery)
3-Increase coil build up time ( more dwell) with dual points.

Or use all three . By 1955 ( 12 volt systems) you may not have needed all these .....

[Bruce Lancaster]

Another thing...there are many garbage repro points available to us, and they often cannot be set so that individual point dwell and gap and combined dwell are correct all at the same time because pivots are incorrectly drilled or other dimensional errors exist. If stuck with one of those, you could render the make side point inop by adjusting it way off, then run on the single. Also a burned point set could be flopped as needed to put best parts on break side and bad parts on make side, again adjusted out of the circuit.
Anyway...if good ignition is attained with one point, the function of the dual point setup is unnecessary. Just keep it under 7,000 RPM...