This topic has seemingly been one of those topics where '
people only believe what seems believable to them.'
So allow me add some points to ponder;
1) -People have said that 6:1 Compression ratio is too much for cast (Babbitt) bearings however early Diesel engines with Babbitt bearings have survived reliably well under extreme load conditions ...and with compression ratios nearly 3 times greater than the aftermarket Model-A Head with 6:1 compression ratio. So how is this possible??
2) -Why is it that the first 'modern era' Model-A high compression Head that was so popular (-no telling how many Brumfield Heads sold from the 1980s thru the 2000s) had 5.9 compression ratio. So after all these users bragged that the 5.9 ratio was the perfect Cylinder Head for a Model-A it was determined that the 6.0 ratio Head would damage the Babbitt.
3) -Back in the early era of the Brumfield (-along with other 6.0 ratio head manufacturers such as Winfield, et/al) there was not an aftermarket FSI Distributor used, -or needed. Model-A owners just used the trusty, reliable stock-appearing Model-A Distributor with great success. So why is it that one of these FSI Distributors are needed now? Is it advertising propaganda ...or was this started by someone trying to justify his Distributor purchase to his wife??
Likely a lot of both!
A little backstory on First Street Ignitions from my recollections. Back in the 1970s, good replacement parts for the Model-A Distributor were difficult to find. A guy from Houston named Tommy Trailor decided he would reproduce Model-A Distributor Cams so he tooled and had them manufactured in Argentina. Truth being told, they were pathetic but many were sold. The Distributor Condensers available in that era (-this is before Al LePore began making a quality unit) were just about as pathetic as the cams. Ignition Points quality was all over the place too. Now during this era, a moving truck rental fleet that had industrial 330ci and 359ci Ford engines in their trucks were often plagued by ignition problems and reliability issues while out on rentals. In that same timeframe, an aftermarket truck lighting manufacturer developed an aftermarket electronic ignition system for industrial engine usage called the Ignitor. The two biggest retrofits that put the Ignitor on the map was the Volkswagen Bug & Dune Buggy retrofit, and with U-Haul retrofitting all of their 1960s & 70s truck engine distributors to electronic ignitions.
Then sometime in the late 1990s/early 2000s, a restoration shop in Oklahoma named First Street Restorations came upon the concept where adapting one of these Ignitor ignition systems into a stock Model-A Distributor would alleviate a lot of the struggles everyone was having with Model-A Distributor parts. I agreed, and actually bought in as a distributor/dealer for their retrofit kits. I sold & installed a lot of them. There were two major benefits to their system that solidified their marketing. The Ignitor system provided the individual ignition spark at precisely the exact timing between all 4 cylinders. This was a huge problem with the reproduction Model-A Distributor Cams during this time. The 2nd benefit that the First Street kit provided was they sold an Ignition Coil that provided a hotter spark when coupled to a triggering system that allowed more time for coil saturation. Effectively, their marketing was modern vehicles are using electronic ignitions, and so using a Model-A electronic ignition makes more power and is more reliable. People bought into this because it seemed believable. Then along came reproduction Dist. Cams from Bill Stipe that had a profile that was just as accurate as the First Street unit, and Bill designed the lobe where it allowed the Coil to have more dwell/saturation time. So, with the hotter coil along with Bill's Cam and LePore's Condenser, you had a reliable ignition system (-which reliability issues often plagued the First Street and the Nu-Rex electronic systems) that produced the same hotter spark. With the demand of the retrofit kits likely diminishing, First Street developed the next 'must have' which was the Zipper Distributor. Now Hobbyists were touting that their Model-A had huge power gains just by installing one of these new Distributors. Again, people believed what seemed believable. Being a dealer for First Street at that time, we installed a couple but we didn't see any noticeable performance gains. In full disclosure, we were testing it against a properly rebuilt Model-A Distributor fitted with a Stipe Dist. Cam, good quality Points and Condenser along with the original style Distributor timing set correctly. For the guys who had worn out stock Distributors with lobes that were flat, and burned-up Points, and a JC Whitney Condensor, these new Distributors likely did make a noticeable performance gain. Nonetheless, the debates here on Fordbarn during this era often became heated as people argued their opinions based on what seemed believable to them.
So ...if you are one of those that only believes that a Model-A high compression head requires the use of a FSI centrifugal Distributor, (-even when the first-hand experiences of others counters that opinion) then feel free to believe that.
