Capacitive discharge ignition

[j-f]

Hi,

I'm looking for a good ignition system and saw that CDI looks to be the more efficient for our flat4.
I saw a few used Crane analog CDi on Ebay and wondered what kind of distributor is needed to work with that?
I have an old Mallory YL dual points that I would like to use, but don't know what it takes to wire it to the Crane box?

[pupjoint]

i was looking into this 5/6 years ago, i wanted to keep the 010/019 distributor. stock engine, dual 40DRLAs, saw the Winterburn CDI on samba, bought it and fitted it. still points and blue coil.  seat of the pants dyno told me there was a significant diff with and without the CDI especially the low end. throttle felt lighter too.  the 019 was from Glenn and i had already fitted it with a resistorless rotor.

5 years down the road, i am still using it, same set of points , mileage not much covered about 13,000km and it is still running OK. still on the same set of points, recent maintainence was change of new plugs and new diaphragms on the DRLAs. points still look OK , just greased up the points and refitted. plugs were BP5HS that i swapped out for some Iridium NGK plugs

i never bothered with the car much as its more of a weekend runner, so i never explored much beyond that.




i am not an electronics person, there have been huge discussions on Samba on this Winterburn setup, i dont know how they work, but i do know it worked OK in my application.  it has an off , points and CDI switch, so i did try switching over to points and then back to CDI and the diff is still there. car just pulled stronger from the go.

i also noticed this on Samba, maybe you can explore this option, Petronix CDI box.

https://www.thesamba.com/vw/classifieds/detail.php?id=2046523

[pupjoint]

in the older days i do recall also some have been running the MSD box with 009/010/019 with points but MSD coil and high tension plug cables.

i wasnt keen on spending on the MSD and coil setup hence i went with the Winterburn box.

[Martin S.]

Interesting bit of history there, thanks! I had no idea the worlds first CDI was an invention by F.L.Winterburn in 1962 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/unsung-motor-industry-hero-fl-winterburn-his-capacitor-nicholas-gomez/