Electronic Distributor for 202 red

[Nelsonian]

Any ideas on where to obtain a reasonably priced unit with coil in Sydney?

[bee utey]

Ebay search: 2 minutes and this:
HOLDEN 6 CYLINDER ELECTRONIC DIZZY - eBay, Other, Car Parts, Accessories, Cars, Bikes, Boats. (end time 10-Sep-10 20:54:39 AEST) (http://cgi.ebay.com.au/HOLDEN-6-CYLINDER-ELECTRONIC-DIZZY-/150490359267?pt=AU_Car_Parts_Accessories&hash=item2309eca5e3)
Probably more available around the country, they are easy to post.

[Bigbjorn]

A good trick is to get a Jaycar kit and use your existing points distributor to trigger the electronic unit. If you wire it smartly,all you have to do when the electronics **** themselves is to change over a couple of wires and keep running on straight Kettering ignition. It is called failsafing.

[Nelsonian]

Just had an electronic dizzy fitted. The difference is unreal. Very smooth power. I had to get a rebuilt bosche. I am very happy with the difference.:):)

[Doctor W]

I just went to a wrecker and got one.......a complete dizzy from any early Commodore with the red motor, or blue motor will be fine. Make sure you get the special coil with it too - they're a special coil, no ballast resistor and some internal differences resulting in making 60,000-80,000 volts........now you can get the matching wide gap ( .060" ) spark plugs.

It's a simple job to remove the old one and put in the new one using the standard method for R/R a dizzy, lining up TDC etc. Swap in the coil and new plugs and you get an amazing diffrence from a really good smooth idle all the way up the rev range to get better power and torque especially.....not huge gains on paper maybe, but by seat of the pants, fantastic benefits.

Take the time to thoroughly grease and lube the shaft and mechanical centrifigual advance mechanisms as they will definitely need it after all this time.

Mine cost only $50 for dizzy and coil and I bought new Bosch cap and rotor and I also got a set of 8mm leads ( which you need for the different dizzy cap top lead connectors ) and new spark plugs to handle the 4-5 greater voltage gain.

[bee utey]

I just went to a wrecker and got one.......a complete dizzy from any early Commodore with the red motor, or blue motor will be fine. Make sure you get the special coil with it too - they're a special coil, no ballast resistor and some internal differences resulting in making 60,000-80,000 volts........now you can get the matching wide gap ( .060" ) spark plugs.

It's a simple job to remove the old one and put in the new one using the standard method for R/R a dizzy, lining up TDC etc. Swap in the coil and new plugs and you get an amazing diffrence from a really good smooth idle all the way up the rev range to get better power and torque especially.....not huge gains on paper maybe, but by seat of the pants, fantastic benefits.

Take the time to thoroughly grease and lube the shaft and mechanical centrifigual advance mechanisms as they will definitely need it after all this time.

Mine cost only $50 for dizzy and coil and I bought new Bosch cap and rotor and I also got a set of 8mm leads ( which you need for the different dizzy cap top lead connectors ) and new spark plugs to handle the 4-5 greater voltage gain.

One small job that's worth doing before you fit another dissy is to replace the nylon drive gear on the shaft. You can use one salvaged off an oil pump, it's steel and lasts forever.

[rofosixone]

when i had my holdenised swb series 3 ,one of the best things i ever did was put a elec dizzy off a blue 202 motor (vc or wb one )and yes also put alloy timeing gear and put it on the end of the dizzy as well ,that std factory plastic is rubbish use to strip them.at that time there was a holden wrecker at blaxland ( lower blue mountains ) not far from penrith way who specilized in wb holdens ect ,he had heaps of them dizzys and was cheap . if you need his ad it was 17 attunga rd blaxland or 02 4739 2132 .as said its been a while so ring to make certain if hes still there , but he had em and there was no need to search elsewere .as for that dizzy ,you do get extra power but only trouble i had was the dizzy use to move causeing my timeing to move /now was it because i had a hotted up motor (it use to rev hard) puting presure on the nut and hook on the end of shaft not certain but i had to resort to superglue it /that worked some what and yes like locktight it can be undone.also i had coil issues (std one didnt last ) ended up useing a usa brand called eichelin (did i spell it right)that brand of coil did last .also remember being holden can get parts anywere almost ?.only weakness of dizzy was that small plastic pipe that sticks out were the vacum advance rubber hose was connected too - its fragile , break that your in big xxxx.
ps red 202 didnt have electronic ,had points /after 20,000km points are gone on av - did 200,000km on electronic with no probs untill springs got weak inside causeing timeing to move or wander a bit /minor details .

[landrover dave]

I just went to a wrecker and got one.......a complete dizzy from any early Commodore with the red motor, or blue motor will be fine. Make sure you get the special coil with it too - they're a special coil, no ballast resistor and some internal differences resulting in making 60,000-80,000 volts........now you can get the matching wide gap ( .060" ) spark plugs.

It's a simple job to remove the old one and put in the new one using the standard method for R/R a dizzy, lining up TDC etc. Swap in the coil and new plugs and you get an amazing diffrence from a really good smooth idle all the way up the rev range to get better power and torque especially.....not huge gains on paper maybe, but by seat of the pants, fantastic benefits.

Take the time to thoroughly grease and lube the shaft and mechanical centrifigual advance mechanisms as they will definitely need it after all this time.

Mine cost only $50 for dizzy and coil and I bought new Bosch cap and rotor and I also got a set of 8mm leads ( which you need for the different dizzy cap top lead connectors ) and new spark plugs to handle the 4-5 greater voltage gain.

You can tell the difference between a points coil and an electronic coil by looking down the hole where the coil lead goes, points coil has a slotted screw an electronic has a phillips screw. Yes it is that simple!!!!!!!

[navigation2000]

G'day everyone,

Glad to see these threads appear.

* Note that when sourcing a Bosch electronic dizzy, the little stickers on the vacuum advance modules are usually coloured, for example, a blue 6 degrees sticker, tells you at a glance that the advance module shaft, diaphragm, and related parts, are calibrated to throw at certain times, thus getting the right dizzy isn't just as simple as sourcing one and chucking it in.

I know some people like tinkering with these things, but personally I find it to be a hassle.

My answer to finer tuning of the vacuum advance mechanism involved sourcing a suitable fish tank air bleed valve, which I installed inline with the manifold vacuum source(intake manifold) and vacuum advance module.

I think it cost me the best part of $2.75.

Simply cut the vaccum advance line and insert the air bleed valve.

All you do then is close off the air bleed valve until it's about 3/4 shut, then test drive it, and if the advance feels restricted, open the valve a tad. Keep doing this until you reach a point where you can feel the responsiveness falling away, then knock the valve back a smidge and leave it.

I should add that I've done quite a bit more than that to my ignition, so playing with these things isn't something I'm unfamiliar with.

I added a Crane Cams HI6 CDI and a PS91 coil atop of my Bosch electronic dizzy.

To that I added a 4.7uF plasma ignition system, with hand built custom made spark plugs and hand made leads etc, utilising microwave oven blocking diodes and all the rest of it.

Then I threw on a water/methanol injection system, just to give it a bit more oomph.

My 202 is basically stock standard, but fitted with Wildcat extractors and a Redline intake manifold which has a water heater welded to the plenum.

Atop that is a 34ADM Weber carb.

Electronic ignition should be the very first modification considered when looking to improve your Holden 6, or any other engine for that matter.

[Doctor W]

One small job that's worth doing before you fit another dissy is to replace the nylon drive gear on the shaft. You can use one salvaged off an oil pump, it's steel and lasts forever.

That's a really good idea......I have seen them stripped and thus resulting in a no-go situation.

[navigation2000]

One small job that's worth doing before you fit another dissy is to replace the nylon drive gear on the shaft. You can use one salvaged off an oil pump, it's steel and lasts forever.


Hi there,


Try not to misinterpret what a failure of the nylon drive gear signifies.

People often wrongly attribute a failure of this gear to it being made of nylon, or they think it failed because it was old. More often than not, these interpretations would be wrong.

The nylon gear is designed to break if the distributor shaft bearings wear out to the point where they begin binding up.

By doing this(breaking), the nylon gear safeguards the camshaft to distributor drive gear which is cast onto the actual camshaft itself, and is non serviceable.

That's what the nylon gear was designed to protect.

A nylon gear failure almost always signifies that it's time for you to rebuild the distributor, or replace the distributor. It can't be said much plainer than that really.

That said, it does make very good sense to carry the steel gear(with new roll pin) in your toolbox as a backup, as others have suggested.

They're only small and take up hardly any room. One can be quickly installed if the nylon gear ever does fail you.

The steel gear will suffice to get you home, or at least get you to some place where a replacement distributor can be found. Once you get your replacement distributor, just continue to use the nylon gear as per usual.

Running the steel gear at all times is not going to alert you to a dizzy bearing failure, in fact, the steel gear will keep turning a badly worn dizzy to the point where it's completely destroyed, and if that dizzy seizes completely, what's going to happen to the camshaft to distributor drive gear?

Then you'll be looking for a new camshaft as well as a new dizzy....and if you're stuck out in the middle nowhere, or even if this happens in a town, you'll still have more drama than you need.

[bee utey]

Hi there,


Try not to misinterpret what a failure of the nylon drive gear signifies.

People often wrongly attribute a failure of this gear to it being made of nylon, or they think it failed because it was old. More often than not, these interpretations would be wrong.

The nylon gear is designed to break if the distributor shaft bearings wear out to the point where they begin binding up.

By doing this(breaking), the nylon gear safeguards the camshaft to distributor drive gear which is cast onto the actual camshaft itself, and is non serviceable.

That's what the nylon gear was designed to protect.

A nylon gear failure almost always signifies that it's time for you to rebuild the distributor, or replace the distributor. It can't be said much plainer than that really.

That said, it does make very good sense to carry the steel gear(with new roll pin) in your toolbox as a backup, as others have suggested.

They're only small and take up hardly any room. One can be quickly installed if the nylon gear ever does fail you.

The steel gear will suffice to get you home, or at least get you to some place where a replacement distributor can be found. Once you get your replacement distributor, just continue to use the nylon gear as per usual.

Running the steel gear at all times is not going to alert you to a dizzy bearing failure, in fact, the steel gear will keep turning a badly worn dizzy to the point where it's completely destroyed, and if that dizzy seizes completely, what's going to happen to the camshaft to distributor drive gear?

Then you'll be looking for a new camshaft as well as a new dizzy....and if you're stuck out in the middle nowhere, or even if this happens in a town, you'll still have more drama than you need.

That's news to me, I've replaced tons of these, never seen a seized dissy in service, but seen plenty of broken nylon gears on otherwise functional dissy's. Hey if it turns you on fit a new nylon gear instead and carry a spare for the day it drops dead (it will). I am always willing to change my mind when you show me a seized-in-service dissy.:) And I don't mean one that rusted up on a wrecking yard motor.

[mick88]

I got one from a late model 173ci and fitted it into my 186ci...trouble free running. But I still carry the old point dizzy in the tool box....if the fancy once stuffs up I am knackered. Better to drive home with the old girl miss firing than walk home I reckon.

Cheers, Mick :)

[navigation2000]

That's news to me, I've replaced tons of these, never seen a seized dissy in service, but seen plenty of broken nylon gears on otherwise functional dissy's. Hey if it turns you on fit a new nylon gear instead and carry a spare for the day it drops dead (it will). I am always willing to change my mind when you show me a seized-in-service dissy.:) And I don't mean one that rusted up on a wrecking yard motor.

So, by your reasoning, the engineers got it wrong when they decided to install a precautionary nylon link between the dizzy/cam/oil pump on a Holden 6?

That's interesting.

Nope, I haven't had any fully seized Bosch electronic dizzies either, but I've only ever had about half a dozen of them fail on me over the years.

I do know people who claim these dizzies have seized on them fully.

It's been my experience that they tend to stop firing just before they seize.

Once they begin to grind the top bearing to bits, the flying metal fragments become magnetised and attach themselves to either the stator or the reluctor, then when the engine is shut down, one tiny piece of magnetised metal is all it takes to bridge the gap at any point around the perimeter of the stator/reluctor and that's all there is folks, dead short. It will never start again, unless you remove the fragment that's effecting the short.

You can do that several times, and you may actually get it to fire up again briefly, but all that happens is the other bits of metal you couldn't see, or reach, again become magnetised, and start flying around and before you know it, you have another dead short.

That caper grows old pretty quick.

That particular dizzy was as close to seized as I have ever seen, it was no longer turning freely, and felt more like a ratchet in the way it was turning. The shaft was moving up and down at least 1.5 inches, but no, it wasn't quite completely seized.

Not sure if I still have it lying around, I'll have a look tomorrow.

You may have misread my post, I never said to fit a new nylon gear to a dizzy that's already broken one, I said, in that event, fit the steel one to get you home.
Fitting another nylon gear at that point will only get you a short way before it too gets eaten.

[bee utey]

So, by your reasoning, the engineers got it wrong when they decided to install a precautionary nylon link between the dizzy/cam/oil pump on a Holden 6?

That's interesting.

Nope, I haven't had any fully seized Bosch electronic dizzies either, but I've only ever had about half a dozen of them fail on me over the years.

I do know people who claim these dizzies have seized on them fully.

It's been my experience that they tend to stop firing just before they seize.

Once they begin to grind the top bearing to bits, the flying metal fragments become magnetised and attach themselves to either the stator or the reluctor, then when the engine is shut down, one tiny piece of magnetised metal is all it takes to bridge the gap at any point around the perimeter of the stator/reluctor and that's all there is folks, dead short. It will never start again, unless you remove the fragment that's effecting the short.

You can do that several times, and you may actually get it to fire up again briefly, but all that happens is the other bits of metal you couldn't see, or reach, again become magnetised, and start flying around and before you know it, you have another dead short.

That caper grows old pretty quick.

That particular dizzy was as close to seized as I have ever seen, it was no longer turning freely, and felt more like a ratchet in the way it was turning. The shaft was moving up and down at least 1.5 inches, but no, it wasn't quite completely seized.

Not sure if I still have it lying around, I'll have a look tomorrow.

You may have misread my post, I never said to fit a new nylon gear to a dizzy that's already broken one, I said, in that event, fit the steel one to get you home.
Fitting another nylon gear at that point will only get you a short way before it too gets eaten.

I did read all your post. I simply hadn't heard of this theory before. After all, the V8 runs a steel gear off the cam and I've never seen one of them fail. My opinion is that Holden found the nylon gear to save them $5 on each car they produced. After all, it's a simple injection moulding. As for failure of the plastic gear pointing to a failed dissy bearing, I DO know that a white nylon gear immersed in a hot engine environment will perish and fail without any help from a dissy failure. My local emergency road service used to keep nylon gears in their toolboxes, as Holdens would drop dead without warning and this quickie replacement put them back to running without rebuilding dissies. This was just about a daily job back in the glorious 80's.

To put it another way: if your nylon gear failed and you found on inspection your dissy bearings were cactus, you wouldn't just put another gear on and close your ears. All the nylon gears I have replaced after failure in service haven't promptly destroyed cams. And I have been fixing distributors for 25 years or so.

Oh and yes, I have seen a failed bearing, it was a wrecker's yard second hand dirty dissy and it made rude noises enough to scare the owner. A quickie dismantle, a new bush and some oil and off it went, never a problem.

[navigation2000]

I did read all your post. I simply hadn't heard of this theory before. After all, the V8 runs a steel gear off the cam and I've never seen one of them fail. My opinion is that Holden found the nylon gear to save them $5 on each car they produced. After all, it's a simple injection moulding. As for failure of the plastic gear pointing to a failed dissy bearing, I DO know that a white nylon gear immersed in a hot engine environment will perish and fail without any help from a dissy failure. My local emergency road service used to keep nylon gears in their toolboxes, as Holdens would drop dead without warning and this quickie replacement put them back to running without rebuilding dissies. This was just about a daily job back in the glorious 80's.

To put it another way: if your nylon gear failed and you found on inspection your dissy bearings were cactus, you wouldn't just put another gear on and close your ears. All the nylon gears I have replaced after failure in service haven't promptly destroyed cams. And I have been fixing distributors for 25 years or so.

Oh and yes, I have seen a failed bearing, it was a wrecker's yard second hand dirty dissy and it made rude noises enough to scare the owner. A quickie dismantle, a new bush and some oil and off it went, never a problem.

Ok then, I guess you must be right, "sacrificial distributor gears" mustn't exist.
My apologies.

[bee utey]

Ok then, I guess you must be right, "sacrificial distributor gears" mustn't exist.
My apologies.

Look if it makes you happy I am prepared to believe you are right.:):):).

There probably were some cam gear failures as you said. After a redesign of the wicking mechanism to get oil to the top bush in the dissy there were probably faaaar fewer failures. So the nylon gear made it possible for Holdens in 1969 to get through warranty without costing the company heaps. Now with better oils etc field experience suggests dissy seizing is a thing of the distant past, so why put a plastic fuse in an engine? Unless you write yourself a memo: Remember to replace gear/inspect dissy bearing every 50 000km.

Oh, and by the way, Holden engineers recommended strongly to keep the fibre cam gear in the Starfire 4 cylinder. Well, my friend the fusspot did that when he rebuilt his Corona XT130 engine, and the genuine fibre gear failed in 10,000km. So I put in an alloy gear (yes it was noisy) and it lasted another 100 000km before he threw the engine.

[navigation2000]

Look if it makes you happy I am prepared to believe you are right.:):):).

There probably were some cam gear failures as you said. After a redesign of the wicking mechanism to get oil to the top bush in the dissy there were probably faaaar fewer failures. So the nylon gear made it possible for Holdens in 1969 to get through warranty without costing the company heaps. Now with better oils etc field experience suggests dissy seizing is a thing of the distant past, so why put a plastic fuse in an engine? Unless you write yourself a memo: Remember to replace gear/inspect dissy bearing every 50 000km.

Oh, and by the way, Holden engineers recommended strongly to keep the fibre cam gear in the Starfire 4 cylinder. Well, my friend the fusspot did that when he rebuilt his Corona XT130 engine, and the genuine fibre gear failed in 10,000km. So I put in an alloy gear (yes it was noisy) and it lasted another 100 000km before he threw the engine.

Bloke, I'm not sure how or why, but this "sacrificial distributor gear" issue has gone from each of us attempting to offer sound mechanical advice to other punters, to more or less a jousting contest. This certainly wasn't what I intended.:(

It's not about me trying to up the ante or trump you in any way, and I again apologise if you feel that's what's happening here.

It's simply about keeping recognised mechanical engineering facts/safety procedures in plain view, thus affording anyone looking for these types of advices, the ability to make an informed/correct decision.

Care needs to be taken when offering these kinds of advices publicly, in order to ensure that you're not inadvertently steering someone down the wrong track, for even if your intentions are pure, as I'm sure they are, if something does go awry, you'll likely be blamed.

Engineers aren't wrong all the time, and often they do get it right, but for those times when they can't get it right, they develop safeguards like these rotten little nylon gears, to get around the problems.

Anyone wishing to confirm for themselves the reasoning behind "sacrificial distributor gears" only need to Google "sacrificial distributor gear" and a wealth of links are made available on the subject.

The curious researcher will quickly discover that Holden isn't the only automotive company to use this practice. If the researcher then decides to pursue the subject further, in quick time they'll stumble across multiple cases where these pesky little gears have caused major headaches for other people as well.

I'll add just this link to help:
Distributor Gears- Car Craft Magazine (http://www.carcraft.com/techarticles/distributor_gears/index.html)

In fairness, the practice of disposing of the nylon distributor drive gear in favour of the steel oil pump drive gear on a Holden in-line 6, for 24/7 continual use, may very well be advantageous, providing you happen to know the precise metallurgical properties of the camshaft in use, and you know that it's indeed compatible with the steel gear. If that approach is still desirable, just do your homework carefully and make sure for yourself that you're doing the right thing.

For me, the simplest approach is to retain the factory designed part, and keep the steel gear in the toolbox as a backup/spare, to be used in the event of a nylon gear failure.

I don't intend to debate this matter further, and will now duly crawl back under my rock and stay there.



*Footnote: With regard to offering advices over the Internet, if you search for "sacrificial distributor gear" or word links relating to this subject using Google, you'll note that this thread appears high on the hits list, thus meaning that it's now linked to the subject being discussed "forever".

Hence why I urge caution when publicly offering mechanical advices of this kind, for if someone does opt to follow your suggestion that by using the steel gear in the hope that it will last "forever", but then it does just happen to go pear shaped on them, it can lead to the unwanted embarrassment of you being linked with the failure "forever".

[bee utey]

This has been educational, thanks navigation2000. Make your own minds up fellas, I know what I will be doing.

[navigation2000]

I just went to a wrecker and got one.......a complete dizzy from any early Commodore with the red motor, or blue motor will be fine. Make sure you get the special coil with it too - they're a special coil, no ballast resistor and some internal differences resulting in making 60,000-80,000 volts........now you can get the matching wide gap ( .060" ) spark plugs.

It's a simple job to remove the old one and put in the new one using the standard method for R/R a dizzy, lining up TDC etc. Swap in the coil and new plugs and you get an amazing diffrence from a really good smooth idle all the way up the rev range to get better power and torque especially.....not huge gains on paper maybe, but by seat of the pants, fantastic benefits.

Take the time to thoroughly grease and lube the shaft and mechanical centrifigual advance mechanisms as they will definitely need it after all this time.

Mine cost only $50 for dizzy and coil and I bought new Bosch cap and rotor and I also got a set of 8mm leads ( which you need for the different dizzy cap top lead connectors ) and new spark plugs to handle the 4-5 greater voltage gain.

Did you also upgrade the wiring to suit the demands of the HEI distributor?

[mick88]

A good trick is to get a Jaycar kit and use your existing points distributor to trigger the electronic unit. If you wire it smartly,all you have to do when the electronics **** themselves is to change over a couple of wires and keep running on straight Kettering ignition. It is called failsafing.


Are these a standard unit or made to suit particular distributors?
Would it be possible to fit one to Ferguson petrol tractor distributor?

Cheers, Mick :)

[chazza]

Are these a standard unit or made to suit particular distributors?
Would it be possible to fit one to Ferguson petrol tractor distributor?

Cheers, Mick :)

The one I fitted to my Rover P6 was a Crane Cams and involved a rather straight-forward fitting of electronic bits into the space where the points used to live. My kit had parts to suit a 6 cyl. or 8 cyl. engine and is completely reversible; in fact I used to carry the points etc. in the boot in case the electronics ever failed, which they didn't.

Get one for Fergie :D

Cheers Charlie

[PhilipA]

Just remember that these aftermarket "electronic triggers" are not full High energy electronic ignitions.
They are just a replacement switch for the points. the Crane,Luminition and AFAIK pertronics cannot be fitted with a HE coil or they last for about Oh 3 seconds.
Ask me how I know. Loooong Looong ago, I had a Luminition and rang the Distributor and asked if I could fit an electronic coil to get more volts. the pimply faced and lazy youth said OK but its not recommended.

So I thought I would try it. After having to order a new one , opened the box and in BIG PRINT was stated "NOT TO BE FITTED WITH AN ELECTRONIC COIL UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES"
Regards Philip A

[Designosaur]

Hi Nelsonian, I don't know if you have found and fitted your ignition already but if not, here is a link to a step by step tutorial on how to do it.

(Just checked the date of the original post rather than the last reply and it would be a good bet that this one is done. Link is useful for anyone with a points dissy in their red motor though)

I followed this to convert my HZ Kingswood and the difference in ease of starting, general performance and how well it maintains tune is fantastic.

Blue Electronic Ignition Installation (http://gallery.oldholden.com/ReaperHR/HRWorkguides/EngineIgnition/Blue_Electronic_Ignition/)

It covers the mechanical and electrical aspects and it will help you to get the job done.;)

B

[Bigbjorn]

Are these a standard unit or made to suit particular distributors?
Would it be possible to fit one to Ferguson petrol tractor distributor?

Cheers, Mick :)

Yes, it is a stand alone box that uses the points as a trigger. You get better starting and performance with the electronic box in circuit, but WHEN the electronics fail you can shift over a couple of leads and run on Kettering points and coil ignition. I use the big print WHEN as in my experience with electronic ignitions since 1971 the bloody things do fail, instantly and irrevocably. I do not regard all-electronic vehicles as suitable for outback and remote area use.