benefits of distributor-less ignition
 

What's the gain here? Is coil on plug that much better?

Its like sharing a girl with seven other guys... Its better to have her all to yourself....

Ok. I'm building an engine on paper and am wondering if that's something to consider.

Better? yes... Necessary? No... How much do you wanna spend? I would put my money on other upgrades..ie. rods, crank, heads, lifters, valves, push rods, springs........................................... ......

Hmmm, I see.

If you want to go crazy you can always put a mag on it...

After all your other pieces are in place and you want totally stable timing control ,then consider crank triggered distributer-less ignition. I agree with Bawana on priorities

I.think.the 496 gets it because it already has it .hall effect distributor guys have gone for the last bit of hp.by manipulating the trigger tin in the distributor to tailor spark event for each cylinder .
So what do you get the engine for Christmas,that already has everything ?
Coil on plug ignition system .

Save your money unless you're starting with it on the engine

depends on what you are trying to do....if you are running a "basic" ignition and a carb no, but if you are doing a MSD style and EFI I would say yes, the RF interferance that is flying around with the MSD box and some aftermarker EFI ECM's can drive you crazy, so at that point the LS coil packs, crank trigger, cam sensor deal is far better...Alex Haxby/Eddie Young can answer the fine points on this...

I am a bit familiar with Eletromotive units built into their EFI and stand alone. What it does do is reduce emmisions a bit as a plug is fired on compression and one on exhaust at the same time. They eliminate a spark gap. They have the ability to adjust dwell eletronic distributor systems dont. A 1bar map sensor can be connected to act like vacuum advance (not sure how well that would work on a marine app but would try it. Of corse for boost other MAP sensors can be installed. More time for the coil to build up spark. Oh it does help carb set ups too.

Eddie installed them on my engines. One of the main benefits is the ablility to run dual knock sensors which is a lot more protection for the engine. My engines were 1070hp quad efi whipples. Fuel distribution with my set up was poor because I wanted to go with low boost. If you crank up the whipples the distribution is much better but my main goal was longevity. With the MSD, distribution between the 2 banks was way different forcing Eddie to tune the richer bank even more rich. When he changed to the coil on plug system, he was able to get them almost the same. This didn't correct the distribution issue but masked it because the coil on plug system had the ability to ingnite the fuel load in the cylinder. My oil with the MSD would become fuel contaminated pretty quickly. With the coil on plug the oil just remained like new til I changed at the end of the year.
It is pricey, but worth it. Really, ideal for all performance engines would be distributorless ignition and port injection. I think Eddie pretty much only does distributorless ignition now as it really doesn't cost that much more with a scratch build.

What kind of efi are you running?

MEFI 4B boat sold and in Cali.

Port injected is what got me thinking about all this, they seem to like crank triggers. Is that to fire individual cylinders instead of banks or batches?

I wonder if a more powerful Holley system was used if the results in fuel distribution would be the same. Is the problem the blower or an efi system that was never intended to be used in a boat or work with a blower...?

What's the thought process here, why quads if you want a low boost setup?

Roughly how much does it cost?

Whipples line up is 3.3, 4,5,8.3 litres. The 3.3 not enough, my quads were the twin 2.3 so 4.6 total. I found a deal on the quads which was about one third the cost of a new whipple intake, intercooler and blower system. Eddie was not excited about using the quads.

most all of the EFI's running now are batch fired some have gone to sequential, but more complexed...the holley unit it I believe, Alex haxby can answer that easily...

I run the Holley HP EFI system in my na 540s - multiport injection. I went from msd ignitions with pro billet distributors (magnetic pickups) to disconnecting the mag pickup and used the Holley 60-2 crank trigger.

It's a hall effect trigger, far less interference issues than the magnetic field from the msd, less issues with EFI and a lot more accurate (typical of any crank trigger). Holley EFI lets you run paired, bank to bank, or un-timed sequential injection strategy like this or you can install a cam sync to go full sequential. Without the cam sync, the ECM doesn't know what stroke the engine is on (2 turns of the crank for every turn of the cam). Ideally a hall effect cam sync should be used, but some have modified the reluctor wheel down to one blade in the MSD distributor and reuse the MSD mag pickup. Either signal can be input into the Holley ECM to handle the signal. Again, the magnetic pickup route is asking for interference issues.

I basically ran one season with the MSD ignitions being controlled by the Holley ECM to get full timing control. This worked well, but was still only as reliable as the MSD ignition box (I've gone through 4 in 6 years). After being sick of the MSD system after another failure, I was recommended to switch to Holley DIS. Although it makes more sense for supercharged engines for some of the reasons already brought up above, I still decided to make the switch with my NA engines since I already had the crank trigger and really only had to invest in the coils and wire harness.

The result - Wow, the engines idle better, my oil looks cleaner, and best of all, no more MSD box or components. I know a lot of guys have been using DIS in big cubic inch daily drivers on the car/truck side, so I'm hoping that with fully potted coils that the DIS system lasts a long time on my boat engines. The DIS concept certainly removes all the moving parts from the spark distribution side of things, and separate coils allow for more spark energy since the coils can charge up while the other cylinders fire. The ability to customize timing is not something I've needed to do (my engines run pretty even bank to bank), but the control is there if I ever wanted it, or added superchargers.

FWIW Crane Cams just came out with some new ignition components including a brand new crank trigger pickup sensor. I did not get all the jist but some of it. Some of the features are operating voltage at 6 - 24 VDC and a range to 12,000 RPM, Static timing LED light for accurate set up and the sensor providing absolute stable timing , Part # for this is 1000-2100

Cost me about 11k to upgrade mine. Engines needed to come out, new wiring harnesses, crank trigger wheel caused alingnment issue with all the other pulleys, so they had to be milled. Along with brackets for coils, new wires. No more MSD boxes but did blow one crank position sensor at 110 once. Replaced with part from local gm dealer.

WOW 11k!

I was fortunate in that I had plenty of room in my engine compartment to mount all the pulley brackets outward the thickness of the crank trigger wheel. Probably not so easy with superchargers involved.

I ended up putting my coil packs between the throttle body and valve cover, with the HP EFI ECM on the opposite side. I looked at putting them on the back of the engine, but my high capacity oil coolers are there. By doing this, I was able to shorten half of the plug wires considerably. The ECM wire harnesses easily avoided all of the sources of dirty power/noise lower on the engine (battery cables, spark plugs, etc...).

I made the brackets and used PEM nuts (self-clinching) for the coils so that I can remove them quickly with a screw driver without dealing with the nuts.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-H...8_175823_2.jpg

Damn good looking engines!

I wanted to go crank trigger as well, but with the procharger and sepentine belt set up and no room in the front of the engine decided to shelve the idea to later...

you know you can mill the balancer snout the distance the trigger wheel is thick,,no alignment problems then.balancer movers in a little,thats all.

^^^ yep, 1/8" for the Holley trigger wheel, 5/16 for msd

We normally just take it out of the accessory pulley. This one had quite a different setup. The water pumps were mounted on the outsides of each engine, meaning one was on the opposite side of where it normally is. Because the pump alignment wasn't the same, it had a strange pulley setup. We ended up taking it out of the balancer. With the pump moved, our normal crank trigger brackets wouldn't work. We had to do them individually. Combine that with very little room to work with, and it was a tough one. It normally isn't nearly that much. We had to pull the engines, remove all of the wiring and start over from scratch. Since we never planned for the coils to be on the engines, we didn't really leave room for them. We had to move a lot of stuff around to make it all work.

When building an engine from scratch, it adds less than 2K to the price.....and it's well worth it. Pretty much every sc engine that leaves here has DIS. I got tired of MSD boxes failing, distributors rusting up, etc. We built all of the brackets and mounts our self, but there may be stuff available now. We still have our trigger wheels and cam sensors made.

Here are some pics of the components.

Dam now thats perdy. Nice work eddie!

Maybe an Innovators West balancer with magnets in the balancer is in order.

i feel like its just a matter of time before somebody (me) throws a foxbody ecm on a bbc with a ls firing order. ( in fords its 13726548, draw it out on paper compared to chevy cylinder numbering. its the same.) go ahead and compare an ls to smallblock ford on paper. you will realize gm took the sbf and dropped a few mil to come up with the ls. take an ls header and a 302/351, chopoff the flange and tell me which is which? sure the ports of the head are more efficient but millions of dollars will do that.

im glad chevy has decided to continue on with pushrods. but i feel like pushrod tech has reached its limits for our life time with oem and they will be moving to ohc within 10 years.

they are already direct injecting. which we will never see as long as we have bbc in our boats.

A buddy of mine has been doing those kinds of ecm swaps as long as I've known him and it's been awhile. He's on old farm boy that can barely read and the stuff if seen him build with no money is unbelievable. If it cost him more than $100 to put a direct fire ignition on something he'd be crying. The parts are there just takes a little bit of time and determination to make it work.

As far as pushrod motors they should have been payed to rest years ago. Yes Ford started coming of age with there over head cam stuff but the Japs were doing it long b4 them on a production level and the technology for the OHC has been there since the 60's. My gripe with Ford and Chrysler is why the follower after the cam? Why not the cam on the valve like it should be?

Ford engines in some of the Jags are the same as in a Ford for the most part but use cam on valve. Only issue was the guy genious that did the initial stackups didnt realy know how to stack up a valve train. Didt scew with the engine but caused a lot of heads to be scrapped before they could be installed because they were out of speck. Of course he never built an engine or did a valve job on a old Jag.
Reason behind not using bucket tappes is space. Think it was like 1.5 inches taller height over cam followers. I find it amusing that the first engines were either over head cam or valves in block (flat heads). Most think over head cams are new stuff. Most dont realize that it took some 35 40 years to develop a push rod motor. The pushrod motor was a breakthrough as they were cheeper to build, manufacture, rebuild, smaller easier to package, lighter, produced better low end power. Look at a 302 ford motor fully assembled next to a 4.6 Modular motor with the heads removed they are the same size. pUT THE HEADS ON THE MOD MOTOR and its bigger than a big block.

The roller folower design I found amusing as it didnt realy to me ever get rid of the pushrod. Sure looks like a pushrod comming out of the lifter to me its short part of the lifter but a pushrod.

Another thing is the ability to advance and retard the cams in newer motors but anyone ever heard of Cam-A-GoGo? It was a cam gear with a spring that could advance and retard a cam in a pushrod motor. Ford at first could advance a cam but not retard it I mentioned this set up to them think they are now using a somthiing similar now.
My thoughts leaned towards get rid of the cam completely Renault has had sucess with it.

Split port heads were allso a big improvement in pushrod motors such as the 3.8. Heads were done for most all ford pushrod motors and out did the OHC engines.

of course getting rid of the cam completly would be the way to go. with a solenoid opoening the valve. one could literally go from the smallest of "cams" to the largest of "cams" within the time it takes for an engine to rev up from 500 to 8,000 rpm and be efficient everywhere inbetween because of the programming of the solenoid.

by direct injection im talking like a diesel does. something an A9L A9P T4MO etc computer from ford never thought about.

Here is what I came up with for mounting my GM LS3 truck coils. I used my manifold bolts and made 8 little brackets and spacer tubes. It worked out very well and the factory coil harnesses were long enough to accommodate this modified spacing. They are down semi-hidden beneath the manifolds and I am able to use standard GM truck ignition wires. I tried to use readily available replacement parts where ever I could to reduce any boating season delays waiting for exotic crap to come in when something breaks. I do like the way it turned out. Motor is very clean on top.

http://i734.photobucket.com/albums/w...psgszfsjm0.jpg

http://i734.photobucket.com/albums/w...ps0thsosnb.jpg

Gotcha.

Looks good. That's exactly what I was thinking for coil mounting. Only thing I thought of differently was using studs instead of bolts.