Mechanical to Electronic Distributor ?

[DiNka]

As the Topic says, my 3A has a Mechanical dizzy I should say its in bad health planing on replacing it in the near future . Any one done the conversion ? is it DIY ? How much did it cost ?

Cheers.

[TURTCEL]

I have never done a conversion on a Yota before but if it anything like an older Chevy, Ford, Dodge, etc...I have swapped from a points style dizzy to an electronic dizzy by only splicing in the wires to the original harness.

By integrating all the electronics into the dizzy you will eliminate components mounted to fender wells and fire walls. You would also need to change your plug wires.

It should be a pretty straight forward swap...meaning only so many wires needed and splicing is easy. Should have an ignition wire, a ground, and a tach lead on the new electronic dizzy. The tach on your mechanical dizzy runs off of your external coil.

I would refer to an electrical diagram of your car and the FSM for the Tercs to assure proper wire splicing. It should be very straight forward though.

Make sure the vacuum advance is good on the new dizzy before install.

Peace

[Petros]

the distributor is already electronic, it uses a cam with an electrical pick-up. Even the more modern distributor-less systems use a pick-up off the cam to trigger the electronics to spark the fuel in sequence. There are very costly kits that you can likely adapt, it will still need a signal from somewhere, if not off the distributor than you need to add a pick-up off the cam or crank somewhere. Some have even adopted ignition systems from newer cars, parts would be less but there would not doubt be some head scratching and messing with it to make it work. I have heard that Ford 4 cylinder system is often used to adapt older cars because the ignition processor is separate from the EFI controller.

I am not sure it is worth the trouble, the factory system is reliable and already has a built-in coil making the system simple and compact. If you want more performance you should look elsewhere for that, you will not get it by trying to improve the spark system that is already pretty good. Get the stock system so it is all operating properly and it will serve you well.

[TURTCEL]

Hey Petros, I looked at the pics of his engine from his other postings and noticed that it has a different dizzy than ours. Looks like a cap style with an external coil and ignitor. I know that is still an electronic set up but is there a way to put in our style of dizzy?

Obviously a single vacuum advance style.

Peace

[Petros]

that is correct, I forgot that he had the European ignition system, it actually common to other models of Toyotas, I think the corolla GTS and the MR2 uses a similar set up. I have no idea whey they gave us a different set up. But my comments still stand, it is just the system with the external coil. Most of the toyota line-up all uses common parts, it is just a matter of find what other cars use the same parts you have in your model.

It is a major operation to switch from the factory installation to go to a distributor-less ignition system. Much easier to diagnose what is wrong with the factory set-up and fix it.

[TURTCEL]

Thanks Petros. Don't see how anyne would go distributorless ignition. That sounds like a total pain. We don't run any cam or crank sensors for our dizzys that I am aware of.

Is it possible to switch from the European style dizzy to our style dizzy though? Not really sure where the distributorless ignition thought came from but I never inteneded for that system to be considered. Just dizzy style swap.

Peace

[dlb]

my '82 westfalia was the only car i owned with a points-style distributor, and i hated it. they never seemed to last long. on the other hand, i've never had a problem with the electronic dizzy components in a t4. i would be tempted to swap this as well, were i dinka.

[TURTCEL]

DiNka has an electronic distributor...it is not points, just European style ignition. It has and external coil and ignitor mounted to the fender well. The center spark plug wire goes to the external coil/ignitor unit.

Peace

[Petros]

my '82 westfalia was the only car i owned with a points-style distributor, and i hated it. they never seemed to last long.

there are inexpensive kits to covert from points to capacitive discharge, using the distributor and coil. The points not only deleiver a less reliable spark, they wear out and go out of adjustment as the parts wear and get pitted from the arching. when the points rubbing block wears it also changes the spark timing. I think it was my 1965 volvo 122S that was the last car with points that I owned, and if I wanted it to run good I had to readjust the point gap and reset the timing about once a month. It was normal to have to replace points and spark plugs every three months.

We have become spoiled, now you can get up to 100,000 miles on a set of spark plugs, and there is nothing to wear and go out of adjustment in all the modern systems. this is why few self wrenchers even own timing lights anymore.

[dlb]

DiNka has an electronic distributor...it is not points, just European style ignition. It has and external coil and ignitor mounted to the fender well. The center spark plug wire goes to the external coil/ignitor unit.

Peace

sorry, my bad. i know that some of the european tercs came with points-style ignition, like in australia and norway and figured that's what dinka had. that's why i thought he wanted to swap to our north american style of dizzy.

[gmeddy]

Hi, this thread didn't seem to go very far, I don't know if the original guy who started it ever went ahead and had any luck or not, but I just did this job and thought I would share.

I had the same style dizzy as Dinka by the sounds of it, external coil, centre lead runs from dizzy over to coil, but my one does have points!

My mechanical dizzy has three wires connected to the top, one is just to the little condenser, the other two are a 12v ignition feed, and a mystery wire.


I pulled an electric dizzy with internal coil out of a Tercel at the wreckers, I didn't notice what year model it was, but everything under the hood looked younger than mine, despite the 400k kms it has on the clock! My Tercel only has around 280k.

Side-by-side dizzy comparison:


as you can see, my little dizzy has only one hose port on the vacuum advance canister, and I don't know if either of them does something different from the one on mine... So when fitted, i just capped off the bottom one and ran my vac line to the one closest the dizzy body.


Now when it came to the wires, I just checked which of my wires was the 12v IG feed, and connected that one to the wire on the elec dizzy that has a red line on it.


The other wire I left unconnected.
I turned it over, and she started and ran perfectly!

The tacho still works fine, so as I said earlier, the other wire that was connected to my dizzy, which runs through the firewall, is a mystery wire.

I have left the old coil and all it's connected wiring how it is, just in case this dizzy dies for some reason, out in the middle of nowhere, I dont want to have to do too much work to get the old mechanical one hooked back up again.


It looks good, and runs well!



If anyone can tell me what the other wire is for, both the one in my car and the one on the electric dizzy, I would be very interested.

Hope my little post is helpful or interesting to someone.
thanks.

[dlb]

great post, gmeddy. i'm sure it will be useful to someone, somewhere down the line.

re: your new vac advance canister. you are correct that the two ports on it are different. the upper one advances the timing about 8* at idle and highway cruising, while the lower one advances the timing about 13* at highway cruising. having both working really helps with highway fuel economy.

as before, suck on each port to check if they hold vacuum. if they don't, cap the other end off and leave it. if they do hold vacuum, connect the upper port to manifold vacuum at the black port shown in the top right of this photo:

https://tercel4wd.com/forums/viewtopic.php? ... uum#p45450

and connect the lower port to the port on the right side of the weber, marked 'vacuum advance port' in this pic.

[TURTCEL]

I appologize...dinka does have a points dizzy. Sorry DLB I spoke too soon.

Peace

[gmeddy]

thanks DLB, great to know where the two lines should be going!

[Petros]

the third wire could be for a tachometer connection.