Recent content by MadScientistMat

Techflex F6, if you don't need it to look original. It stands up well to temperature and I even accidentally had an antifreeze spill ignite on it without causing any damage. The one problem is that it soaks up oil and other liquid. F6® Woven Wrap | Techflex.com

A lot of the designs in the speed parts industry just plain aren't possible to protect with a patent. And a lot of well-established speed parts have some level of copying - for example, Aeromotive was started by people who had left Essex Industries, and a lot of their pumps and regulators look a...

Yep, best case for Speedmaster is they found an existing counterfeit parts operation, asked "Could you put our logo on it instead?" - then didn't check when the parts arrived. That's at least slightly defensible - "We're trying to get counterfeiting operations to act more like legit contract...

Charlie is correct about how the '66 timing tab attaches; it is a separate piece, bolted on.

The system I tested used multiple diodes, one in between each spark plug and the distributor. That would drive up the price, but should improve distributor life.

Reversed wires to the distributor pick-up generally result in timing that's way off; check with a timing light.

The starter relay gets its positive power from the ignition switch and its ground through the neutral safety switch.

The Mopar box's dwell is not constant either. It's a very simple design from an era where transistors were expensive and using an integrated circuit in a module would have been unthinkable. (At one point, Chrysler patented a voltage regulator design, which they never used, that had only one...

All you need is a pair of ring terminals for the field wires and the plug for the voltage regulator. The plug is a bit of an odd design, but it's readily available through most parts stores.

Interesting, I think that's a plasma ignition system. We tested a similar design when I worked at DIYAutoTune - I won't say who built it because it was an early development mule and maybe they sorted the bugs out. What this ignition did was it charged a capacitor to 500 volts similar to a CDI...

Also worth noting - HEI isn't the only ignition with variable dwell. The Bosch systems used on most early '80s European cars, Ford's TFI ignition module (the one that replaced the Duraspark), and pretty much everything fuel injected where the EFI computer had timing control integrated all used...

If this isn't using forced induction or spinning to 8000 RPM, the only thing I have to add is to get the advance curve dialed in for your motor. This is one of the biggest things people overlook, and a bad advance curve leaves a lot of power on the table.

Applying for a business license. Interestingly they didn't reject the application and instead asked me to make corrections and resubmit it.

The local zoning board does not like the idea of making electronics for sale at home. It appears that having them made at a local contract manufacturer may work but would force this project to start a couple steps further along than I originally planned. Looking into this further...

It's also possible to do this with a specialized vacuum advance can - although I have no idea where you'd get one nowadays. Or if you're running EFI, it will probably have this feature built in.