Series 3 Electronic Ignition 123- vs- Britpart

I know we have been here before but it drove me nuts ...

Having spent 300.- euros on the 123 unit, it eventually drive me bonkers, no one, not even the manufacturers could tell me which one of the advance curves to use it was all a bit hit and miss.

Then having added an SU carb conversion from ACR the improvement in power and performance was kinda there but also kind of not .. there is a big drop in power at around 1500rpm right where you need it to pick up.

So I decided to buy a unit from Britpart.
The BP unit is electro mechanical, still having moving parts and a real vacuum and i can tell you all the difference is day and night.
Happy driving, up hill in 3rd and it ticks over really nicely.

The moral here is kind of "not all that glitters is gold"
Don't be taken by advertising or baffled by science.
Some times the simple solutions are the best.

Next stop for me is the cylinder head and camshaft from ACR.

Simon

Thank you for posting, I think your point is well made. Sometimes it pays to stay with the "generation" of technology that the vehicle was designed for.

This the first series landy I've heard of having trouble with an electronic ignition, I swapped from the old contact breaker points cos I got fed up of constantly adjusting them. Also, I haven't heard anyone having trouble with advance curves on such an old plodder type engine. I've thought about getting an ACR camshaft and a stage one head but I think that route will cause troubles. Let us know how you get on if you do the upgrade. How much extra power are you after?

Col

Colthebrummie said:

This the first series landy I've heard of having trouble with an electronic ignition, I swapped from the old contact breaker points cos I got fed up of constantly adjusting them. Also, I haven't heard anyone having trouble with advance curves on such an old plodder type engine. I've thought about getting an ACR camshaft and a stage one head but I think that route will cause troubles. Let us know how you get on if you do the upgrade. How much extra power are you after?

Col

Click to expand...

Hi Col,
just to be clear the 123 unit itself is fine, it works but the difference is that the vacuum advance is a sensor and you have to set a curve, i listed them in an earlier post & the issue is that no one so far has been able to say which one to use, the curve data gives starting RPM for the advance, the amount of and the maximum advance at various RPM
... subsequent trial and error failed to determine a suitable result.
All of the data I was able to find for our beloved 2.25 engines does not match with any of the curves, bearing in mind that we need a dynamic data set.
The BP one has none of these bells and whistles, relies on tried and tested old school mechanics ..

Simon

[QUOTE="Colthebrummie, . I've thought about getting an ACR camshaft and a stage one head but I think that route will cause troubles. Let us know how you get on if you do the upgrade. How much extra power are you after?

Col[/QUOTE]

Col,
why do you envisage troubles?
I'm going for the same & have had a good email exchange with an American pal with the same age SIII and engine.
The target is to be able to tow a 3ton trailer and be able to keep up on the motorway.
With the SU carb and the powerplus camshaft and the head (my head skimmed and rebuilt with larger valves) I should get an additional 40+ BHP

Simon

Has anyone worked out curves for the 123 ignition? I bought one a few months ago and it seemed great for the first week then i've not been able to get a good setting since.

[QUOTE/]

The moral here is kind of "not all that glitters is gold"
Don't be taken by advertising or baffled by science.
Some times the simple solutions are the best.
[/QUOTE]

Er no... the moral is understand what you are buying? If you're not able to grasp curves, and vacuum advance, and can't be bothered to learn "Some times(sic)" the mindless solutions will be best". I run a 123 with a 17H in my Series. Short of a Megajolt, it's the best ignition solution for the 4 pot 2.25/2.5 LR engines. Mine is the twin-curve variant. I run mine as a Bi-fuel, thus use the trigger wire to fire the curve for the fuel I run. Gas or petrol. This feature also helps with set-up. Run two near identical curves, and fire one, and then the otther to narrow-in on what's right for your set-up.

The big issue for me was the start point. Lucas speak in inchesHg, and psig, and 123ignition in Bar or mmHg.(or was it hte other way?) Anyways, I wound up doing a conversion table to sort out the mess. See my notes...

Na not really mate, the 123 I bought was an early version with a limited number of pre set curves none of which worked on my SIII up here in the Alps, in the end i bought a distributor from Distributor Doctor which is so much better, I certainly understand the science a d I’m not a dimwit thanks and actually I find your comments rather offensive to be honest so well do e at being a smart arse and good luck dude.

109SeriesIIA said:

[QUOTE/]

The moral here is kind of "not all that glitters is gold"
Don't be taken by advertising or baffled by science.
Some times the simple solutions are the best.

Click to expand...

Er no... the moral is understand what you are buying? If you're not able to grasp curves, and vacuum advance, and can't be bothered to learn "Some times(sic)" the dimwit solutions will be best". I run a 123 with a 17H in my Series. Short of a Megajolt, it's the best ignition solution for the 4 pot 2.25/2.5 LR engines. Mine is the twin-curve variant. I run mine as a Bi-fuel, thus use the trigger wire to fire the curve for the fuel I run. This feature also helps with set-up. Run tow near identical curves, and fire one, and then the otther to narrow-in on what's right for your set-up.

The big issue for me was the start point. Lucas speak in inchesHg, and psig, and 123ignition in Bar or mmHg.(or was it hte other way?) Anyways, I wound up doing a conversion table to sort out the mess. See my notes...[/QUOTE]
That all sounds very intelligent, the trouble is only about 0.1% of the population are likely to understand it. The rest of us like to fit and forget.

Co?

Col

The later variants can be run via your phone. This seems like a good idea, only in the process 123ignition for whatever reason dropped the two-curve trigger function. Unless you're able to flit from one curve to the other in a split, I'm not sure this is a gain. Curve-to-curve is a very useful function... you've got your own rolling-road.... OK, a laptop is an incongruous sight in a 60YO leafer, - then - it doesn't stay there long.

I've spent ages sorting out the curves for NG, this for a daily. Don't run petrol too often, thus I've never really bothered to do the R&D on my petrol curve., I've been able to wring the very last bit of oomph and economy out of gas.

Sorry, use petrol as a 'get-me-home' fuel only. In petrol, the 'stock' Land-rover Lucas 45D curve translates to 123ignition to look something like this. See attached.

View attachment 272290

Start here, and fiddle a little, and you won't be far off. The above is from the LR bible combined with Lucas tech sheet (see my notes) and no more than that. Hence LR have done the work for you. And that's as far as any mechanical dizzy can go anyway. You will do better than LR with 123.



For petrol, you could leave 'as is' ... as above. I suggest you try a little harder. With twin curves to flit in split seconds it's easy. The stopwatch function helps too.



OK, it's a cooking engine, and they'll run miles out, but for my use, alternative fuels ... I wanted more. And if you're going to do it, do it.

My set-up is not really petrol. Petrol in name only. The dizzy for my application does not exist, and looking at my gas curve now, I don't think its clockwork equiv. ever could.

Mine's Version 123/TUNE-4-R-V-G. (That's USB not Bluetooth) Short of full 3D Megajolt, it won't come better.

Then again, it's all a matter of opinion. If I used petrol enough to warrant, I'd add a Holley Snipe in a heartbeat. Which won't be the norm either.

.

The Dizzy Doctor is really good though and for most of us who are old school mechanics or weekend warriors and haven't got the science knowledge that you seem to have are very happy with what we get from a straight out of the box solution, I mean come on guys its a Landy not a Ferrari its a practical either "working or not" example of British engineering (there's a little Heath Robinson in all of us) able to take a real beating and keep going as the UK forces showed time and time again and they all seem to be a little different, for me the SU carb combined with the Dizzy Doc works great up here whereas for others the Zenith and Brit part Lectric dizzy is the solution for our 50 somewhat horse power beauties .. right?

Yes, Electronic ignition is pointless

For marketing and legal reasons, along with a massive tech. support labour bill any business would want to avoid, with potential for a PR disaster, I can see why 123ignitions support remains non-commital. Understandably they leave you on your own.

Getting centrifugal advance info was very easy. In the manual. Finding and translating reliable vacuum info into 123 format, not so. There's no easy route to finding Lucas vaccuum advance for LR. An MGB on the other hand... If 123 had supplied more example screen-shots as I've shown above of typical curves, that would help lots.

With an increasingly 'entitled' customer-base, that want this sort of thing served on a silver platter, it's a shame, only it's clear why they side-step this. The other suppliers quietly do the same.

Seems Roland at ACR now sells 123ignition. He knows more than most on how to get grunt out of these,

Meanwhile back in diesel world our biggest issue is what glow plug arrangement to upgrade to - happy days.

Agreed, you have a point to some extent, yet you write as if yours was a perfect solution. Each is a compromise. Be ready to sob your heart out.. 'happy days' for now, there's dark days ahead for diesel. Not if but when. Unless you've been living under a rock, thus not seen the accelerating depreciation etc, you'll know, knives are out.

To be fair 109SeriesIIA, my comments were kind of tongue in cheek - I'm reminded of how "not perfect" the old NA diesel is every time I hit the incline to home. As far as "living under a rock" - well, running a fleet of 24 diesel vehicles ranging from tractors to combines to pickups and trucks kind of keeps us in touch with the ongoing situation.

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Having spent 300.- euros on the 123 unit, it eventually drive me bonkers, no one, not even the manufacturers could tell me which one of the advance curves to use it was all a bit hit and miss.
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Just had a look at this - 123Ignition's SWITCH variant. With 15 Pre-sets, the problem is clear. Not one of them is even close. Max advance is Preset F @26Degs. not enough, and at 500rpm, it's at 10 Degs, which is too much. As a start poiint we need 6 Degs and 38 Degs respectively. At 2000 we want 24. F gives 14. Not sure why it was necessary to contact 123Ignition, they won't have your engine, the info is all over the web and in the LR manual.