1967 MGB GT – Electronic Ignition

With a view to putting an end to my ignition problems I’ve decided to take the plunge with electronic ignition for my MGB GT. Having looked at a few electronic ignition systems I found some of the neatest (and by far the cheapest) systems are those on offer by Powerspark and Accuspark. Both seem to be identical to one another and claim to have an easy installation process and for approximately £30 delivered there wasn’t much to lose! I went for the Powerspark branded item which I bought from Simon Best British Classics (http://www.simonbbc.com) at his eBay shop. The promptly delivered package contained a small blister pack with everything I needed included and a full set of instructions was listed on the back (I also referred to the Accuspark instructions on youtube to make sure I understood the process before starting).
The instructions are fairly straight-forward, essentially you whip off the dizzy cap, pull out the distributor then replace the points/condensor with the electronic module before putting the thing back together, the only telltale sign being an extra wire going to the coil for a positive feed. By far the most difficult things for me were the removal of the distributor and setting the timing. The distributor was well and truly stuck after undoing the retaining clamp, it took liberal application of WD40 over several days (plus running the engine to warm/cool the area) before I could finally twist/pull it free, don’t rush this, I’ve read a few stories online of folks damaging the distributor casing trying to force it out! Setting the timing was the other tricky thing, my car doesn’t have vacuum advance so standard timing settings don’t work for me, my rev counter is wild so cannot reliably tell what the idle speed is and I don’t have a timing gun even if I had the other two! Without adjustment (i.e. putting the distributor back in the same orientation I pulled it out) the car started fine but would stutter when revved, twisting the dizzy body I could get a nice idle and a free revving engine, no more rough running! To dial it in I went for a drive with the distributor clamp loosened and listened for any pinking, it took a while of going up hills, part throttle, full throttle to find a setting I was happy with before I tightened the clamp back up, the whole process including fitting (once the distributor was out!) Was less than an hour.
So far it has been reliable, I’ve not done many miles and I keep the original points/condenser in the boot if I need to revert back but so far so good and well worth thirty quid, I’ll update this post with any issues I encounter!

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