Ignition Upgrades (wiring help needed)

[SteinOnkel]

Hi Guys,

car in question is a California 1978 1800.

so ever since I got the car, it has had the world's worst idle. I replaced most of the components, the low hanging fruit, wires, points, rotor, cap. Rebuilt the carb, removed all emissions stuff, plugged my intake manifold wherever I could. Slight improvements, but I refuse to believe that the car idles consistently on all four cylinders.

Then I hooked up my timing light. Oh boy.

Poor thing was basically idling at 20*. I tried to knock that down to 5*, but man it just wouldn't do it. The sooner after TDC it tries to spark, the more the actual time of ignition wanders. And it wanders by a fair bit. +/- 10 Degrees

Long story short, I'm replacing the distirbutor to a new one from the '79-'85 cars. Picked up a new dizzy and an ignition control module. Where I balked was the outrageous price for the heatsink/coil. From what I can tell, the coil is nothing special (it's $12 at Oh Really Auto Parts). I will be building my own heatsink, no big deal.

My question is about the wiring. I found this diagram:

https://www.manualslib.com/manual/10676 ... =74#manual

But it's not super helpful. Does anybody have the pin-out of the ICM? Where does the condensor get hooked up to?

Thanks
Manuel

[spider2081]

Does anybody have the pin-out of the ICM? Where does the condensor get hooked up to?

I think you can find that information on Mirafiora.com You have to be a member of the site to access the library.

[SteinOnkel]

Okay, got it working today. I grabbed an alloy heatsink out of a spare computer power supply I had flying around for the ICM. Then I dropped in an NGK 48860 Coil that has 0.5ohm resistance. It says to use an external ballast, but their tech support told me it should be good without it. It does get hot, about 70C after an hour of moshing on it.

Much cheaper alternative than buying the outrageously expensive module/coil/heatsink bundle new or used. Also Auto Ricambi's distributor is so so. One of the pins inside the connector to the icm isn't crimped right

I wired it up according to this image:

http://enthusiastnetwork.s3.amazonaws.c ... iagram.jpg

The ground point from the screw of the icm is critical. You will not have a spark without it.

Car runs much better now. Turns out my weber 32adfa does not have a ported vacuum out of the box, but the dizzy has a fair amount of mechanical advance. I set it to 10* degrees at idle and it advances to about 32* mechanically. I could drill holes into the carb to make it work properly, but the stupid thing will not stop dripping at idle, no matter what I do. So next step is to take this junk carburetor off of the car and convert it to a set of motrocycle carbs I have flying around in the workshop. Should be a nice performance upgrade.

Cheers
Manuel