<VV> Ignitor II update

[Bill Elliott]

A few weeks ago, I posted about the Ignitor II now allowing you to hook 
it up with ballasted voltage to both the Flamethrower II coil and 
Ignitor II (though the instructions said "for optimal performance, hook 
both the coil and Ignitor to a full 12v".  Due to the wiring 
complexities of my Corvair-powered Westy, I opted to go for the easier 
solution and use the ballasted voltage (also allowing for a quick and 
easy return to points in case of ignition failure). The VW uses an 
actual external ballast resistor. Everything appeared to run fine.

Then, as I'm driving it more and more in preparation for my wife's 
extended trip in this summer, I noticed that it was intermittently dying 
when you selected reverse. Not the dying you get when the idle is set 
too high (triggering the vacuum advance) and pulling it into gear 
retards the timing... nor the dying when the idle is set too slow... but 
a "turn the key off" death. And it never did it going into drive, just 
reverse. I was thinking about the neutral safety switch, too much drag 
from the trans, etc...

As I kept trying to replicate it, it would seldom die. But when I was 
actually driving it, it would. I started to notice a pattern.... it did 
it more at night. And it did it when I was parking or leaving a parking 
spot, but not when I was testing it.

The common thread that I came up with? The power load. At night the 
headlamps were on. In actually driving the car, my foot was on the 
brake... in the controlled testing environment in my garage, it was not.

So this led me to surmise that when the headlamps were on and the brake 
lamps were on, putting the VW in reverse (and lighting up the backup 
lights) did a momentary drop of the system voltage that (after the 
ballast resistor) was intermittently below the operating threshold of 
the Ignitor, causing it to simply turn off.

To test my theory, I rewired around the ballast resistor (leaving 
everything else just the same), feeding both the coil and Ignitor a full 
12V. Since then I have not been able to get the engine to die a single 
time... either in testing or in actual driving.

As a side effect, the engine starts much easier, idles slightly higher 
when cold (but not hot?), and has better (apparent) throttle response 
(though measured acceleration performance did not change).  I just 
wanted to post these findings in case anyone followed my previous posting.

Now if I could just get the PG shift point up a bit higher (TV lever 
adjustment maxes out at a 3800rpm shift...)

Thanks!
Bill


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