W&H DuCoil Distributer

[geojoh]

Does anyone know what a W&H DuCoil Dist. Model #2JC is for?

Thanks, Geo

[bill jones]

-how about posting a photo so we can see what it looks like?

[geojoh]

Bill,

I made a mistake on the model number. It is a 1JC.

I have no way to post a picture of the distributer, sorry

Geo

[Ed-vancedEngines]

Can not tell you about any soecific model number.
The Dual coil Distributor was a fairly good idea for the times before the CD boxes. It was somewaht siple in design and had two coil towers in the distributor cap so o it could send the fire of two coil's energy into the cap instead of just the energy of one. That meant by theory that the plugs got twice the spark energy.

Very old school. I guess thay would be still cool on a nostalgia car for looks.
Ed

[T RICK]

I saw one back in the late 60's. I thought it had 2 sets of points one for each coil and that increased the dewell duration for more spark. I think it also was like running two 4 cylinder engines by haveing the 2 coils. Not totaly sure it was kind of strange at the time. Anybody remember the exact lay out?

[Ed-vancedEngines]

Most all performance and high performance factory distributors had two sets of points.

The ignition points are only for triggering. The WH Distributor had two coil wires in the top fo the cap. It could be very likley that each coild was triggered by each point set. That would send two differet fireing spikes down the same rotor to the same distributor.

I am pretty sure I have it in some old books and also maybe in an old racing ignition book from years back. I will try to look for it later tonight,
Ed

[T RICK]

ED- so you are saying it fired the cylinder twice like a lead and trail. So it had and 8 lobe cam with the points not dead on 180 degree offset and not a 4 lobe cam. On a scope it should look like two spike per cylinder. That is different then what I was thinking. We thought things like that were high tech back then. Post a pic of the rotor if you can.

Thanks Rick

[bill jones]

-Eight cylinder du-coil distributors had 4 lobes, dual points, dual coils, two coil towers on the distributor cap, and the rotor was double ended but the each end of the rotor was separated from each other.
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-This was actually two 4cylinder systems to operate an 8 cylinder engine.
-The dwell time was such that you had twice the spark available to each plug and the point spring tension didn't have to be outrageous to turn the high rpm because the points opened and closed at 50% of what an 8 lobe did.
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-The rotor had a brass circular path about 1-1/4 diameter that connected out to one end of the rotor----and the cap had a carbon button that brought the coil energy down thru the cap from the additional second coil tower.
-The other end of the rotor was sort of normal except for way the plastic of the rotor was designed to insulate these two 4 cylinder ignition systems.
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-One end of the rotor fired every other sparkplug terminal just like a 4 cylinder system----and the other end of the rotor fired every other 4 terminals on the opposite side of the rotor.
-While one cylinder fires---the other end of the rotor is passively rotating past one terminal on the other side of the cap then it fires at the next terminal.
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-The trick was to figure out the firing order----where a common firing order of 18436572 ends up being 15426873 because the spark is alternating back and forth and out thru the distributor cap terminals from each end of the rotor with each successive each spark.

[John S CHLEGEL]

I have a W&H DuCoil D310B for chevy v8.Whats the value. I had these on a 283 50 years ago.

[vincenelson]

My partner and I both ran the DuCoil distributors in the 60,s, Worked well for the time period. It had a large cap which you can see today with some of the fords, msd large cap. What is funny is some of the caps today still have the extra provision for the second coil terminal casted it to the cap, with no brass terminal installed. The large cap helped in spark scatter, just like today. As with the earler posts the rotor was double ended and had the extra brass ring for the rotor to ride on inside the cap. It was a four lobe inside for the points. The draw back was that the dwell on both points had to be exactly the same to have the engine fire all cylindars at the proper time.