Hi all, been a while since I last visited, frustrations with the 40 ford drove me away from it for a couple years. I am finally willing to convert it to 12 volt, put an alt on, and a electric fuel pump, in the hopes that it will finally be reliable (or even usable) I had someone tell me, so long as I am going that far, put an MSD box in it, but for the life of me, I cant figure out what it is. Ive been on the website, and I just dont understand it. The wiring diagram still shows a dizzy, and a coil, so I dont understand what the box does? Thanks for the help, a pic, just for fun...
Its an ignition control box. I prefer electronic distributers with the control in the distributer itself but thats just me.
Looks like you have a flathead in the 40 Use a Mallory electronic ignition and you will never look back. Your flatty will love you too! Well worth the money
yes, 59a flatty, should have mentioned. I has a mallory point ignition now, but how does the box control ignition, if it still has a dizzy?
yes it controls the distributer from the box. Look into the Mallory Electronic by the time you mess around with the MSD box and all that crap its abou the same price. I have had 3 mallory electronics in different motors and they all worked perfect. I personally like everything contained in one unit within the distributer instead of having some box mounted somewhere.
I will say this. I think if you have a very high performance motor or racing I would consider the MSD. but for stock applications or mild motors the Mallory has worked well for me.
Convert it to 12 volts and just stick with the stock stuff. You will be a lot more happy that way....
sounds good to me. I wasnt considering at first, but thought I better look into it. My first clue should have been that if i didnt understand it, I shouldnt be getting it. thanks guys, think Ill go out to the shop today, and start pulling the blown starter, and gen, and I think even the third carb off.
Many of the Mallory Flathead distributors were shipped with the SBC advance curve. Bubba will fix this and any other distributor problems. He definately will fix you up. You may want to get back to basics as far as carburation goes. Remove and block the 2 end ones. Get it running good on the center. Then deal with adding the end secondarys. You might find you really don't need to convert to 12 volts. With 6 volts it is very important that all connections are clean and tight. That goes for both power and ground. If you have a stock ignition switch check it for contact wear. They can become intermitant. That will drive you nuts tryiing to figure out what is going on. Good Luck.
I was also worried about it having the SBC curv in it, and checked it out, and it seemed to be in line with the recomended flathead curve (tho right now i cant recall just what it was). I had originally tried to drive the car with one carb, but its a 276 with a big cam, and one carb didnt seem to be enough, no power at all, but it did start easier. probably shouldnt have jumped to 3, but its all i had linkage for.... the main reason im going to 12 is that everytime i go to start the car, it involved charging the battery, usually longer than the planned drive was, and it kept blowing up starters, so im going to try an all new starter instead of a rebuilt one, and ive been threw 3 or 4 batteris in 3 years as well. for 450 bucks, im going to get an alternator (powergen), and hope it cures all my reliability issues, relating to starters and batteries. thanks for the help!
The Jalopy Journal
