Chrome Box?

[KitCarlson]

In the late 70's or early 80's I installed a retrofit Borg-Warner ignition on my 66 Barracuda. The unit uses an optical trigger replacing the points, not the standard electronic mopar reluctance setup. It worked well for about 30 years and recently failed. I think the box is fine since I can trigger it by shorting the orange and black sensor leads. Wiring is similar to the 5-pin mopar box except the 5th wire feeds the optical sensor, and is not sourced by a 4-pin ballast.

My question is does the chrome box with red heatsink, look like, a mopar chrome box? If that is the case, I may purchase a reluctance distributor and give it a try. It might work, or B-W changed some things and it might not.

Meanwhile I am testing one of the $45 ebay ready-to-run distributors.

I also have plans to use the trigger wheel, a new opto-switch, and micro-controller board to build a simple user programmable system the electronic advance for RPM and manifold pressure. It might take a few weeks.

 

[66plyValiant]

the plug for your box looks the same as a mopar box, but the distributor has 3 wires insted of two

 

[KitCarlson]

I think the third wire supplies the LED (light emitter), the others are for the light receiver and signal return.

The third wire is (pin3) on the control box, it measures about 320 ohms to the coil supply (pin1), that is about right to power the LED.

I do not have a mopar 5pin box to compare.

Thank you for showing the diagrams.

 

[66plyValiant]

I think you can salvage your plug and most of the wiring is already you just have to make sure by following which ever diagram you like the best, personally I like the single ballast resistor, just make sure you don't reuse your original box because I don't think it will work without the 3rd wire going to it your distributor now looks almost like a hall effect 318 throttle body FI distributor, they have 3 wires also

 

[BillGrissom]

I have used the similar Crane XR700 on 3 cars (originally Allison). It has a similar optical pickup (3 wires), but their own "ignitor" box with 3 power/coil wires. Your optical pickup probably failed, as did one of mine. Replacements cost ~$50 so I fixed mine. I just picked it apart, looked up the part numbers and ordered a new infrared emitter and sensor. Worked fine, but too much effort to do again. The 3 wires are +5 V, gnd, signal.

Since you have the "ready to run" distributor, as I do for my 273, why go back? I expect your old B-W box still requires the ballast, as does my XR700. Only later, in GM's HEI, did they learn how to control the coil current so they didn't need a ballast.

I suspect the optical pickup is more precise. I may consider using it with an HEI module. That requires providing +5V power and shifting the output signal to cross zero (series capacitor?), so probably a custom circuit board and a definite back-burner project. 66plyValiant is correct that the optical pickup wiring is similar (or identical) to a Hall-effect pickup.

If you can develop a spark timing controller in 1 week you will give MSD a run for the money. Their's is $$$. Search the GM 7 or 8-pin HEI module, which allows timing control. The Holley Commander 950 interfaces with it, as do other engine controllers. You could do similar.

Re the Mopar boxes. If you look on rockauto, it looks like they supply the 4-pin box for all years now, at least the photos show that. As I understand, the early boxes needed a ballast for the coil and another ballast for the box itself, hence the dual ballast resistor. Later, they were able to eliminate the ballast for the box itself, so went to the 4-pin box and single ballast. I think you can connect a 4-pin box fine to a car w/ dual ballast and 5-wires, it just won't draw any current from the extra wire (grn/blk to pin 3, I recall) or from that ballast, as you can see in the post by 66plyValiant.

 

[dennday67]

I just built an HEI setup like slantsixdan and did away with the ballast resistor for $25 from junk yard parts.

 

[BillGrissom]

dennday67,
He doesn't even need that since he has a SB (assume) which has the inexpensive HEI distributor available, which he bought. None for the slant or BB, but do have for RB. I am wiring a home-built HEI for my slant like you, but I'll bet my wiring will be prettier than yours or Dan's since using the 8-pin HEI.

 

[KitCarlson]

Bill,

It may only take me a week or so to develop since I am starting with the engine management system I developed for vw and mopar 2.2L turbo engines. Last night I changed the software to eliminate the fuel injection routines. I am working with electronics I designed in 2003. It is overkill, however gets me going without developing new hardware.

I also finished the optical pickup unit. I used an off the shelf optical interrupter that is rated for the automotive temperatures. I used it on the VW air cooled engines and did not have a problem. I am using a 1966 SB distributor, removed the fly-weights and added a set screw, to lock the cam on the distributor shaft.

Next I need to write the specific software ISR to handle the trigger wheel and do the dwell and timing control. That should be much easier than the sequential code that I wrote for the 2.2L that used direct fire.

I will start a new thread and post some pictures of my progress and system user interface details.

Here is a url for my past work: http://pwp.att.net/p/s/community.dll?ep=16&ext=1&groupid=372867&ck=

 

[67Dart273]

That box surely is not compatible with a Mopar magnetic dist.

That think is fairly old technology. The light source most certainly is powered, and the photo device may be passive, IE photocell, or it may have power, IE phototransistor. At least the latter is surely not compatible with a magnetic pickup system.

 

[KitCarlson]

The instruction manual makes no reference to standard replacement and suggested keeping points in car glove box. You are most likely correct.

The only number I can find on the box is an ink stamp of F185 on the back side potting gel.

If you have a spare 5 pin module and could measure resistance between pin1 and pin3 that could put this to rest.