Electronic ignition

[eyore]

Has anyone fitted an electronic/breakerless ignition to their Fulvia?  If so what unit did you use, who supplied it ,how easy was it to fit and is it fairly unobtrusive?I was thinking of it for the 1.6HF which has a Marelli Distributor.

[rogerelias]

Hi. If you go onto E bay and search lancia fulvia, worldwide search,  there was a seller doing a kit for the hf, with a hall sensor.Roger.

[inthedark]

You can also get them from Demon Tweeks page 254 or 282  tel- 01978 664466

regards
Geoff

[fay66]

Has anyone fitted an electronic/breakerless ignition to their Fulvia?  If so what unit did you use, who supplied it ,how easy was it to fit and is it fairly unobtrusive?I was thinking of it for the 1.6HF which has a Marelli Distributor.

Hi Eyore
I've recently fitted one to my 2c it was made up from a kit from Maplins, by a friend, I'm not really into electrics but he says it was pretty simple to make.
 I found it very simple to fit , but I needed to replace the coil as the 2c has the ballast resistor fitted to the coil,  I understand if you bypass the resistor using the original coil you will overheat it.
That was soon taken care of by buying a Lucas high performance 12v coil, this cost about £24. since fitting my 2c runs much smoother & seems to have more power, it also now has a consistent tickover, something that was always a bit iffy with the old set up,fitting it only entailed  mounting the plastic box containing the electrics on the support strut near the heater, removing the condensor (this must be disconnected removed) and attaching a
red (fused) wire to the + side of the coil
Blue wire to the - side of the coil
green wire to the points by connecting new wire to the connector that the condensor was attached to.
My 2c has a Marelli distributor.
I carry the old coil with the ballast resistor & the condensor in the boot, so if anything goes wrong it's a very simple job to revert back to the old.
I'll can email you some photos if you want me to, as I'm not sure if the photo uploading is still a problem.

Brian Hilton
8227

[RhysHF]

You could also try Classicheads.com, the chap that runs it is called Frank Jolley and he specialises in electronic ignition for cars of advancing years.

I bought my 1600HF from him and he said at the time he would soon have a kit available for it.

http://www.classicheads.com/Electronic_Igx.html

If yo do contact him pass on my regards

Rhys

[YKR 567J]

I have the Frank Jolley kit in my 1600 HF and it works perfectly. Recommended. The module is similar to the one used in the US Pertronix system, sold in the UK by Aldon Automotive as the Aldon Ignitor, but Frank makes up the required adaptor to fit our Marelli S139A distributor. He originally sent me a kit for a regular Fulvia, not realising (despite my pointing it out) that the HF distributor is different, so it's possible that I had his first HF kit after he went away and designed it.

The instructions suggest an enormous spark plug gap if you use, as I am, Frank's high-power coil. The gap is a bit of a stretch for a little NGK D7EA, so I'm using 0.8mm which is still bigger than standard and seems fine.

John Simister

[YKR 567J]

To answer your other questions:

It's very unobtrusive - the only external difference from standard is that two thin wires enter the distributor instead of one. There's no separate electronic box, it's all in the module inside the distributor.

It's easy to fit, but you will need to remove the distributor to be sure of doing it properly, and on refitting you will find that the distributor will need to be turned a few degrees from where it was to set the timing correctly. Setting it statically is difficult - you will need to turn the distributor until you get an HT spark between coil and an earthing point - and inaccurate, so you really should do it with a strobe. The best way is at the very slow idle you get when the engine has just been started from cold, so you can time it on the 8deg marker before the distributor shaft is spinning quickly enough to begin advancing.

Incidentally, my engine developed a misfire at high speeds and loads after fitting the kit, and reinstating the points got rid of it. I suspected a fault with the module, but it turned out to be a bad spark plug through whose carbon deposits the extra voltage was short-circuiting. A new set of plugs fixed it.

Hope this all helps.

John

[Jai Sharma]

Just for info my 1.6HF has had a lumenition system for the last few years - they said they didin't do one, but if you point out it is a Lada system (!) of some type they can find it.

It greatly improved the high revs running but I did have a module fail once. It was replaced without too much bother.

Jai

[rdemasi]

I fit a Crane Electronic ignition on a Fulvia 1.2 distributor.  I forget if it was the XR3000 or XR700 but it works well.  I also used their PS91 E-Core coil.  The car starts easier and idles better.  The directions are very comprehensive.

[lancialulu]

I have luminition on my 1600 HF after speaking to Jai some couple of years ago. Touch wood it works perfectly and right through the rev range. The kit provides a vertical "chopper" which requires total dismantling of the distributor to fit so I carry a conventional dissie in the boot. However electronic mean time between failure is many ordersof magnitude better than mechanical points based so I hope I dont have to get dirty by the road side.

I have previously tried the maplin system and sparkright which basically still use the points as a switch so the points heal will still provide wear/timing issues over time. I also found a less smooth running at high revs compared to the standard system so I have consigned both to historical interest. Both had a little change over switch which allowed reversion to the points system (even while the engine was running) hence easy to assess the standard points was better.

[fay66]

Hi Tim
Thinking about it my Maplin set up also has the switch to change back, no need to carry the old coil set up

Brian
8227

[eyore]

Thanks everyone for all the info,I will give Frank Jolley a call .