Tubman

These things are essential when setting up dual point distributors. I set the Mallory in my car by the point gap specified by Mallory, and couldn't get it to run for ****. I got a cheapo (unpowered) Tach/Dwell meter on eBay, blocked the individual point sets open and set the individual dwell It worked perfect. When I unblocked the points, total dwell was right on. Looking back, I believe that the specs from Mallory were for a different model distributor, or just plain incorrect.

I will jump in here and will tell you that we are fully aware of the "dirty power" situation that is present in all 6 volt cars with generators. There is more circuitry in our "Tachometer Drivers" to damp the voltage spikes and other power variations than there is to do the actual tachometer driving. The condensers have been in the field for over 5 years and over 300 units with NO reported failures.

I see people on here talking about how their Pertronix modules have run 4,6, or even 10 years with no problems. Big Deal. When I got my car in 1987, I performed a regular old ignition tune-up on the stock distributor. You know, points, condenser, rotor, and spark plugs (the cap and wires looked good, so I kept them). In 2016, after almost 20,000 miles, the engine started making a funny noise so I pulled it and replaced it with another I had that was slightly hopped up and had a Mallory dual point distributor. The car had not skipped a beat during the 29 years I had the points ignition in it. Sure, the mileage is kinda low, but for the kind of use these kinds of cars get these days, it's probably pretty typical. I looked the distributor on the first engine over, and the points still looked fine. Pertronix (especially 6 volt versions) are a solution looking for a problem that doesn't exist.

I don't know if this will help you or not, but I did something like this many years ago. I was building a "T"-bucket with a '53 Hemi. The hemi originally came with a "Gyro-Matic" transmission, which was a torque converter ahead of a regular three-speed transmission. I found a three speed out of a non "Gyro-Matic" car. It had a very long input shaft, because it had to span the entire space between the front of the transmission all the way to the flywheel (after the torque converter assembly had been removed). After I found the proper flywheel and clutch assembly, I got everything together and running. (I should mention that the bellhousing was probably a foot deep.) After I got the car running and driving, I found the engine was very worn out, short on power, and burned a lot of oil. A couple of months later I was able to buy a wrecked '55 Dodge hardtop with a 270 hemi and a Powerflite in excellent shape. I pulled the engine out of the car, and it bolted right into my "T", using the existing bellhousing, clutch, flywheel and transmission. There was one problem. The end of the crankshaft was not bored for a pilot bushing. The hole was there in the end of the crankshaft, but it wasn't finished and was about .060" too small. I solved this by turning down a stock pilot bushing until I could press fit it in the crankshaft. This worked fine for the next couple of years while I still had the car. In retrospect, I probably shortened the life of the pilot bushing because the walls were only about .030" thick, but it never gave me any trouble. The short answer to your question is probably "YES", IF you can find all of the right parts. You will probably have a MUCH harder time finding the parts than I did in 1965. Good Luck!.

I'll add another thing about Rock Auto. Their system keeps track of the kind of vehicle you have. Not only does this help with subsequent orders, it allows them to send you messages when they are having a close-out on items for a particular vehicle. I have been able to buy parts for my old cars for pennies on the dollar from them. They are a large company that is constantly buying up smaller outfits and incorporating the purchased inventory. A lot of times, they make an arbitrary decision that they don't want to keep a lot of old stuff in stock, so they sell it on closeout. Because most of this stuff came from existing inventories, it is almost always name brand American made stuff, not newer imported junk. When they ask if you want them to save the fact that you have say, a 1952 Dodge, let them do it. Six months down the road, you may get an email offering a gasket set for $10 or a set of $2 brake shoes. I'll never have to spend retail on any Echkin electrical parts for the rest of my life.

A strange thing happened to me. I am in Minnesota and found a nice pair of '51 plates for my car about 25 years ago. I went to the Deputy Registrar, filled out some forms and I was ready to go. I used the plates for 7 or 8 years. One day I went to the mailbox, and there was a letter from the DMV stating that the number on my YOM plates had been re-issued so I could no longer continue using them. Along with the letter was a brand new set of Minnesota Collector Car plates. The one good thing about it, is that they did the whole thing for no charge. I wasn't happy having to remove my nice set of 1951 plates, but at least it didn't cost me anything. Now this has got me thinking; that was at least 15 years ago, and I'll bet the plates issued with my number have been long superseded. I still have the nice 1951 plates, so one of these days, I'm going to take a trip to the Deputy Registrar and see if I can use them again. Thanks for reminding me.

I just ran across this thread again and to put a cap on things, my partner and I have finished this project. We have three ways to install a tachometer on 6 volt positive ground vehicles. Here is a pdfdescribing what we have available.I am posting this now as I have one of our original production run type 1 driver box left to sell and would like to gauge any potential demand to see if we should gear up for another run. Tachometer project status.pdf

I have an unused partial kit for a '49 to '51 Ford. It is not complete, but enough is there to see it was vacuum operated.

I had a 1948 Seagrave fire engine with the 468" Pierce-Arrow sourced V12. It had a hand crank and could be started quite easily with it (after I tuned it up).

Not your average car. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Other/163042253359?hash=item25f6135a2f:g:oUUAAOSwtnBa9QMk. "Resto-Mod" Corvettes sometimes out-price award winning restorations by a bunch these days.

I'll play devil's advocate here and question the use of any random old 6 volt power supply as a long term battery maintainer. The main problem is that they lack the "smarts" of a regular maintainer and don't know when to quit. Several years ago, I went to get my boat out of winter storage and found the battery was no good. It had been boiled dry. It had a Schumacher 1.5 amp maintainer hooked up all winter. As is usually the case., it said on it something to the effect that if you had problems, you should not take it back to the seller, but to return it directly to the manufacturer. Mainly out of curiosity, I packed it up and sent it back to Schumacher. About a month later, I received a new maintainer from them , with a note apologizing for the failed retainer. Since the unit was still putting out the proper voltage when I sent it in, the only logical conclusion is that the limiting logic built into it had failed. If you are going to go this route, at least check the amp ratings of the unit you are contemplating using. I don't know if .65 amp is enough to fry a battery, but it looks like 1.5 amps will do it and I'd rather not take the chance. This is another reason that I run my chargers/maintainer through a cheap timer.

I am on my second Optima in my car. The first lasted 13 years. I have 6 on this one. I use a regular battery maintainer on it with no problems. In my opinion, Optima batteries have single-handily made 6 volt systems a viable alternative for these old cars. There are two things to pay attention to. First, make sure that you buy them from a place that is willing and able to honor the warranty in the slight chance you may have a problem down the road. Second, I have heard that if you keep them hooked up to a charger for indefinite periods, the connectors between the cells (which are supposedly thinner than regular batteries) can corrode through. I have not experienced this myself, but just to be sure, I have my maintainer hooked up to one of those cheap mechanical timers (less than $10 at Target, etc.) and run it only 30 minutes a day. I have found that this is enough to keep the battery "up" and eliminates any chance of damage to the inter-cell connectors. Oh yeah, they are rated at 800 Cold Cranking Amps. Check the rating of your current battery; you may be surprised. The only downside for me is their odd shape, but there are some tricks to help with that, too.

Exactly.

"kencombs" is correct, as long as the advance mechanisms in the distributor are functioning properly. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

For the initial timing that would be OK. If you have (or can borrow) a "dial-back" timing light, you should be looking for a total advance (at speed) somewhere in the mid twenties. With a good vacuum advance, 4 -8 more can be added in at cruise (high vacuum conditions). EDIT : I just checked a couple of sources and it seems factory spec for initial advance is 0°, so the 4° to 7° you are quoting may be a bit much. I will defer the final decision to the Mopar experts here.