Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Maintenance & Servicing morgan electronic ignition not working

Dave, Speaking of cottage industries: do you recall a black box which when fitted into the lighting system could be switched to make brake and side lights much brighter, for use in fog, I fitted one on my MGB and as I recall the internals contained a ballast resistor, a bulb, and I think one had to replace the stop/tail light bulbs. Anyway, it worked really well. I have tried Googling (new verb for Websters) but without success. You seem to have a wealth of MGB knowledge. Meabh.

Or blown a fuse?

Happy to read that the escort distributor works fine. Usually the problem with such changes is high speed pinging. Make sure that you don't run the engine with a too much advanced ignition and not too lean (exhaust colour light brown; off-white is dangerous).

Frank

I don't remember the bright light black box meabh.........

thanks Bodger,
I never do any high speed driving, especially in the Morgan.
50 mph is my limit , trying to hang on to the steering wheel, a bit like Biggles in his plane.
Will keep an eye on the other 2 things though...
I set the ignition to the book specification, 8 deg B.T.D.C. static, and then checked with the strobe light, and reset to 8 deg exactly.
so it should be OK for a while.
I might have a 2nd look at the 123 Ignition video just to convince my self that points ignition is so bad compared to the 123 set-up? and evaluate the price being asked for such a beast, probably almost $600 au inc postage and gst.That's a lot of money to keep an old banger on the road?
cheers
Peter

Dave, Hmm. I can see it ,describe it, can't find it. Oh well. M.

I am over here one of the very few without electronic ignition in the Morgan. They say that idling is better and you don't have to fiddle with the points anymore. All the other bonuses (petrol consumption, acceleration et al) are IMHO purely theoretical. Freddy Kumschick, a buddy, was multiple european champion in classic F1's and he says the only thing electronic conversions to old engines bring for sure is troubles - he would never use one on an engine with carburetters. But he is a wizard in tuning. As one of the lesser humans I couldn't decide yet which way to go. Perhaps I will change to electronics when my current points ignition should fail. But most probably I will not spend as much as the 123 costs.

Frank

Frank, I tend to agree with you on all points. (no pun)
My car is running perfectly on the points distributor that I have installed, in fact I think even better than before?
Maybe its all in the mind?

I have a tractor engine to rebuild so I will put the 123ignition on hold for the time being.....my shed has too many things dismantled and I dont want to end up with a diesel powered Morgan and a tractor with a land rover gearbox with electronic ignition?

The Morgan was designed for points and that is what is has ended up with again all these years later!
such is fate....

I checked out the hazard warning switch that was wonky and dismantled it to see how it was made.
There was nothing amiss inside but I did find that the locking snib on the top of the switch that holds the body in the dashboard had been broken off at some time, hence the looseness.
Nothing that I can do about that, so reinstalled it and put up with the loose switch.
I just give it a wiggle and the lights and indicators work most of the time. Dont know if replacements can still be bought for a reasonable price?
Read on the Aussie Morgan club site dash board switch fix
that Melvin has some but at the landed price of $150- each...Ouch not for me.

There are some interesting articles in the tec help section in that Morgan club site, one that caught my eye was on the roller bearing steering discusion on this site. This guy does it the Australian way upside down roller bearing conversion ,what if you had a roller bearing at both ends of the spring? food for thought DaveW? more than one way to skin a cat!
cheers
Peter

I'm pretty sure this is right RM.

Lucas Hazard Switch

tmg513,
that is an amazing site.
I will order a new switch.
cheers
Peter