Spalding Twin Coil Distributor

[all american boy]

Found this in a Hot Rod 1961 Technical booklet on ignitions.


Been wondering about seeing two coils on a hopped up motor.


That looks like how they did it.


Says two points are wired different than dual point single coil setup.

 

[miker98038]

Whatever you posted didn’t come thru. But IIRC dual points worked two ways on an 8 cyl motor.

One used a 4 lobe cam, two sets of points, and two coils. The idea was to allow more saturation time on each coil, and a hotter spark. Point bounce at higher rpm was reduced.

The other set up used overlapping points to increase the dwell time without the point bounce. I had a Mallory kit that I used in a 57 Yblock distributor like that. Used the big brass external condenser (go look up what those are worth now), and a firewall mounted rectangular coil. That was 67 or 68.

Capacitor discharge ignitions made most of that obsolete overnight.

 

[all american boy]

'Whatever you posted didn’t come thru'


Maybe you mean a picture.No picture.


Spalding made distributors.All picture would show is what looks like a


dual point distributor.Except it is wired for two coils.


' IIRC dual points'


What are IIRC dual points?


Spalding name was in my Hot Rod History Book 1.


Probably distributors.Book 1 was up to 52 when Olds 88 and Olds engines



showed up.



Now I am wondering where second coil wire would go to.


Here's pic of bunch of Hot Rod Technical Library books I bought.


These things are chock full of REALLY interesting articles.

 

[rotorwrench]

Spalding made dual coil set ups back in the crab distributor days for the flathead V8s as well as modified Lincoln distributors. They generally use a special cap so that the mid cap can use one coil while the outer cap will use the other and both share the distributor. The caps and rotors would be the hard parts to find these days. One of the frequent early Ford V8 posters fabricates replacement trash can capacitors that will work on Mallory or any other unit that uses them.

 

[all american boy]

Magneto section in book has Harmon & Collins mag.


'Originally developed for Ford Flathead V8 can now be adapted to all V8's'.


It has crab cap.


They cover Scintilla Vertex mag first. Pretty much tells you that was the way



to go in '61


Then it has a 'Mini Mag' made by EDIT Mallory with Scintilla components.


It can be installed like a distributor not like a mag that needs a special



drive.



Just grab one of these booklets.These books are AWESOME!