Distributorless Ignition

A couple of pages back, some guys were discussing the difficulty in getting to their distributors after installing a crossflow head. I told them about the distributorless system I use on the racecar and promised to get info from the maker (Electromotive) on price and availability. Go to their website (www.electromotive-inc.com) and look at the XDI unit. I've re-established contact at the factory and they'll sell to me if we put together 3 units. If you're interested, PM me and I'll save you some money over the regular price. Thanks. Basil

Looks like they're having some technical difficulties.

I've played with a similar, yet far less expensive system. Not enough time to really beta test it in the B, but it looks promising as well. I still prefer a good old-fashioned distributor! :-)

sshack Wrote:

Looks like a more expensive version of megasquirt'n'spark.
Only less flexible.

with vems and megasquirt around I'm amazed that any company can still survive
selling such dated electronics.

Basil Adams Wrote:

It's not cheap, Mac. But not horrible either. Send me a PM and we'll discuss options. Basil

sshack Wrote:

Very interesting - thanks for doing the research Basil!

Point taken.

Though vems and megasquirt'n'spark can do just spark if desired.
Last time I looked both setups cost about a quarter of even the cheapest
of aftermarket ecu's and were much more powerful than even the highest end stuff.

They also don't razzle dazzle you with marketspeak technobabble bullshit.

But would either of them work on an MGB??? Prolly not. And the last I looked at a mega squirt, it was a kit you had to solder together. The price for the basic VEMS module is about $650 and that's all you get.

Electromotive is a fine stand alone crank fire ignition, as Basil mentioned, SCCA guys have used them for awhile, I have atleast 17 years experience with these units myself. For the longest time the system came as one piece box, and you ordered them based on your cylinder count (1 coils per two cylinder) the 4 cylinder unit had two coils for example, same coils as used on the systems you've seen in the GM cars for years, in fact this company also maded those ignitions for GM. The only catch for this set up was different boxes need to be made for different cylinder counts, so about 4 years ago, the company decided to go to a split unit one universal main box that could be manually switched from anything from one cylinder to 16 cylinders, and then a separate coil box depending on how many cylinders you have, at this time, these systems almost doubled in price. over my many years of using them, I would have to say I've been overall pleased in thier reliablity, I had one pick up go out, it was probably ten year old when it went, fried one unit like a knucklehead by welding on the car with the ignition in the chassis, later found out, if you are going to weld on your car, you are suppose to remove the system, other than that they gave me many years of performance and reliabilty. The neatest thing about the Electromotive is you have manual dials to set your advance at a given rpm, no need for a laptop hook up, they also have rev limiters built in as well. You have a little bit of custom work to deal with on these units, for example you have to make something to hold the trigger lead, we mostly made these form aluminum and thet bolted on the front engine plate, then you have to bore a center hole in the trigger wheel and mount it to your harmonice balancer, so you need to be able to little custom machining work or know someone who can do this for you.

Here's a picture of a trigger mount and the trigger wheel mount I made up for a guy's 948 dry sump engine he ran in his SCCA Bugeye race car.

The Megajolt Lite Jr. can be ordered fully assembled - just wire it in with a crank sensor and a MAP vacuum line and adjust the program if needed. All for under $300. I've devised a very inexpensive crank trigger wheel, and a new sensor can be had for under $30. Add a restriced vacuum line from the manifold and you're about finished!

Think Megajoule lite also comes as an alpha-N option for those running low vacuum cams.

I guess I'm questioning the importance of the manual adjustment on Electromotive- After initial setup on a dyno, or a series of acceleration runs, how often do you change timing at the track? Crank triggers shouldn't drift like distributors.

On initial setup in a dyno cell, one more laptop won't make much difference.....

I didn't mention that you can use a TPS rather than a MAP sensor with the Megajolt as well - they come configured either way, so if you have a low vacuum cam, its not really an issue. Just a bit more programming to be done.

twentyover Wrote:

Is a crank fired ignition legal in vintage racing where you run, Basil? It isn't around here or I'd have gone to it long ago.

Bill, I don't vintage race and I don't know of a vintage organization that specifically allows it. A couple of guys with crossflow heads were just talking about what a pain it is to get to their distributors on the right side under the carbs. However, if you wanted to do it, you don't need a crank trigger. There's a pick-uip wheel that you can mount right where the base plate of your distributor was and you get to use the more reliable systemand it still looks like a distributor - just no points, condensor... Basil