Today a friend of mine traded me some parts, one of which was a stock dizzy.
I had thought it was from an '84, but I discovered something unusual.

No igniters!!!
It looks identical to my other electronic ignition dizzys, but instead of the ignitors bolting on, the magnetic pickups are wired up to a small wiring harness.

Before anyone says its a points dizzy, its not. No points inside, it has magnetic pickups and a tall rotor+cap.


I assume this is an early electronic ignition system dizzy, and the igniters were mounted somewhere else???
Any info you guys could give me on it would be great, I can post pics if needed.

 

Fender mounted ignitors, early 80's **** I believe.

 

Yah, I thought it could only be a 1980 dizzy. I know all the 81-85s have the igniter on the distributor body.

Did the 80 model have J109s ?? are they at least compatible?

 

The fender mounted ignitor was used only in 1980. I can't recall the number for sure, but it seems like it J-108. Totally different setup.

 

J105's?

 

From what I see the magnetic pickups look quite similar.

Is there anything that would stop me from changing over to the later ignitors (J109s) just mounted remotely??

 

You would be better off using the 81-85 J109 dizzy and ignitors. There used to be a thread on changing the J105 style over. I still have the J105s on my SA with the direct fire second gen leading coil. Haven't had any problems so far. If the 80 ignition takes a crap, I will change it to the 81-85 ignition.

 

just get 2 msd 6a boxes and hook thos up to it no more igniters

 

Was only used in 1980 US models (and probably tested first in Japan on some '79 Cosmos and Luces). Two J-105s over on the fender. The trailing was turned on and off depending on running conditions to help keep the fire lit inside the thermal reactor. The reluctor in the dizzy has an opposite shape compared to '81-'85, therefore perhaps changing to J-109 or GM HEI requires you to reverse the red and green wires. Maybe. I've never tested it.

I have several '80 dizzies lying around. I don't need 'em. Make offer.

 

Just the man I wanted to hear from!!! Thanks Jeff!

Last night after posting I looked at it again and noticed the crazy reverse (upside down) looking reluctor.
From what I can see thats the only major difference.



At first I wasnt terribly happy about getting the early dizzy, but then I figured if I could rig up a direct fire ignition with it, not having to remove igniters could leave me a very nice clean install, also already having a factory sheilded wiring harness would be sweet too!


Maybe just swapping out the reluctor for an 81-85 spec would allow a nice direct fire setup with J-109s?

 

No need to swap the reluctor. Just reverse the red and green wires. At least that's the theory. The J-109s work with a reluctor that has a slow rise time and a fast drop. The '80 reluctor is backwards, so you'd think that simply changing the wire polarity should do the trick. Again I've never tested an '80 dizzy since I've always had enough '81-'85 dizzies to use. Try it and let us know how it goes.