I'm looking at changing from a single points distributer to electronic, however I need some clarification on the leads. The single point dizzy has 1 wire coming out of it which goes ot the +ve side of the coil. On the electronic dizzy there are two wires (see pic)! Am I correct in thinking that the orange lead goes to the +ve side of the coil and the purple one to the -ve side?
Any help much appreciated.
Cheers
James
Rescued attachment 100_0804.JPG

I believe one wire may run via a condenser (capacitor) to ground. The haynes manual should say if you have that?

edit> actually I think you were actually right as I've just found a picture of mine wired up with one wire to each side of the coil, and the haynes manual appears to agree! sorry for the confusion!!

HTH

[Edited on 28/5/07 by DanP]

For a start, I would visit RPIs website to find out which dizzy you have there...

Looks like a 35DM8 to me.

OK, these ned an ignition amplifier, usually mounted under the ignition coil on a rover.

One wire is probably ground, and the other will be the pickup output, which needs amplification before it can drive the coil.

HTH.

Ed.
P.S. To be honest, a Mallory dualpoint might be a better bet, but that one will do the job perfectly well with the right amp.

Nuvver thing:

Are you utterly sure that the points dizzy connects to the positive side of the coil?

That would be most unusual on a negative earth car.

Normally the dizzy connects to the negative coil terminal to earth it when the points close. The positive termoinal normally connects to the ignition live, i.e. to the positive battery post via the ignition main relay(operated by ignition switch).

Ed.

Sounds correct to me, you may find depending on the source of your old loom that it has a resistive wire to get down to nine volts instead of a ballast resistor, either way you need to loose this.

Also that the distributor you have contains all the gubbins, some had a seperate unit that lived under the coil and SD1's had a different block that bolted on the inner wing.

The good news is the later ones have everthing inside, although these are less reliable...

Regards Mark

You will need an amp with that dizzy, as it doesnt have one in it.

Thanks for the responses guys. I remembered that I got an ignition amplifier when I bought a job lot of engine parts, and it's got a wiring diagram

It's a MicroDynamics Type IGN-07 unit. Anyone got any experience with these, good, bad or indifferent?

Cheers

James