Scored this YC337A mallory dual point for a 392 hemi off ebay recently. It has 2 condensers mounted on it. Seems that one would be sufficient. what do you think?
Does seem like over kill a little. I also have a Mallory dual point for my 392, it looks almost exactly like your's with the exception of it only has one condenser. The second condenser would not hurt anything but depending on how it is set-up one should be plenty.
I have one of these on my '51 Olds Rocket. They are kind of a dual coil setup. If you remove the cap, you will see that the points are not connected together like a regular Mallory dual point. They use a special version of a Mallory "FlashFire" coil that has two primary windings and one secondary winding. Each set of points sends current to it's own primary winding, which energizes the secondary winding causing the high voltage spark. This way, they could have a dual coil set up that uses a regular cap and rotor setup without two secondary spark paths. In effect, it is two separate 4 cylinder ignition systems, and each needs it's own condenser. To make sure, open it up and tell us if if the points are tied together and whether it has a 4 lobe distributor cam. Actually, it's quite ingenious.
Yes, 4 lobe cam and points separated. That explains it. Any idea where I could find that coil? Either that or convert to an 8 lobe cam and tie the points together. Then there's the matter of finding an 8 lobe cam.
On an old thread, someone bridged the points and kept the 4 lobe cam to run an 8 cylinder. One condenser of course. Trying to wrap my head around that. Bubba maybe.
In the above example, the only reason to tie the points together is to get the single condenser into the circuit. It serves both sets of points. If they were not tied together, you would need two condensers. The way this is set up, it does not function like a regular dual point where the points work together to increase the dwell, but again, like two four cylinder systems using a common coil. One set of points opens, sends an impulse to the common coil and the plug fires, the engine turns 90 degrees (45 at the distributor) and then the second set of points open and send an impulse to the common coil and it fires the next plug. If it were mine, I'd keep the second condenser and remove the jumper (just for looks). Dual FlashFire coils are hard to find; Over the last several years, I have found two, both 6 volt (black) versions (12 volt coils are red). Keep looking on eBay. Most of the time, people don't know what they have. You can tell one of these because they have three primary terminals, while the regular FlashFires have only two. I have often wondered if one of these could be used with two conventional coils with the leads to the distributor spliced together. I discussed it with a friend of mine (who s an EE), and he said it wouldn't work because of feed back through the tied together coils. I have a suggestion. I have an extra conventional Mallory dual point for a 392. I really like these weirdos, and might entertain a trade.
Yep, lubrication. You can't see it in the pictures, but there is a hole in the top with a spring-loaded ball-bearing in it to allow it to be oiled.