Flathead "ELCO TWIN" unit.........distributor

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

Over time we have got in some pretty cool stuff for the flathead engine and one of my favorites is the right angle front drives.
The "ELCO TWIN" is one of the cooler ones out there!! Uses a dual coil " autolite 16 cylinder distributor. ( must be a popular one as i have three apart in the building right now)
Step one is to clean everything ( ultrasonic tank) , more pics as we get er done.
Questions??? ask away............

[Tim Ayers]

Dang! That is cool.

[Flatout]

The angle drive for mine looks quite a bit different. Also the lettering on mine sticks up from the surface; cast in, not stamped.
Stan

[Walt Dupont--Me.]

Back in 64 I was running a stock car (46) Ford with a Chrysler Spitfire flat 6. 264ci + .125. I cut the cam in half and tirned one end around and welded it back together right in the block. I fired 2 cyl to once. 16--25-34. I picked up a marine dist just like that, not a right angle, and made it fit the spitfire. Dual coil, it was just like 2 dist in one. fired off both ends of the rotor, I used 6 of the holes in the cap and put the other 6 to ground. Talk about low end torque. Walt

[Ol' Ron]

You can make a dual distributor timing cover out of a stock one. This places one distributor on each side of the engine, saw one some place, pretty simple when you think about it. But that's a cool one, Bubba, never saw one before.

[Cool Kat with Hot Car]

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This is the engine that the elco twin distributor that is the subject of this thread belongs to.

[deuce lover]

Love that intake!!

[Walt Dupont--Me.]

What's the name of that intake? I've never seen one. There probably really plentiful. Walt

[itslow]

Looks like a hand-made unit made from a stock distributor plate and some lengths of square aluminum tubing. Not cast like the more common angle drive or dual distributor units.

[Gumpy]

wow very cool distributor never seen one!

[V8COOPMAN]

Originally Posted by deuce lover

Love that intake!!

Not to take anything away from the intake, but how 'bout them KINMONTS, front AND rear? DD

[Tim Ayers]

Originally Posted by V8COOPMAN

Not to take anything away from the intake, but how 'bout them KINMONTS, front AND rear? DD

Yeah, this chassis is certainly the bees knees.

On another note, has anyone ever done dyno testing on a mill with the Elco Twin Plug set up?

Looks boss, but I'm curious if it also adds HP.

I'd assume cam choice would be important in order to maximize the ignition set-up.

[rotorwrench]

I think Don Orosco is reproducing an angle drive that works with the Nash dual fire set up. I imagine a fellow has to dig around a lot to find those old buggers.

Eddie Meyer got into the boat racing there for a good bit and probably had dual plug heads for the boat engines.

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

The dual plug brings more to the story other than hp. By using twin coils that makes it really two four cylinder ignition systems. This would allow longer periods of coil saturation or build up offering hotter spark all thru the rpm range especially at higher rpm. The coils would run cooler and offer a hotter spark output.....

Now the positioning of the dual plugs is another discussion that could go on and on for sure.....using the Nash 16 cap etc the firing cycles between cylinders at the head would be spaced at 45 degrees between sparks...
Anyone wish to elaborate on hp and these events ???

[jack in san diego]

The Elco twin engine and distributor was the brainchild of Evans and Letner. Bert Letner ran a flathead roadster back in the '40s, Troy Ruttman was his driver, the car was unbeatable. Troy of course went on to Indy, and did very well. Bert Letner was a car owner threat in the Jalopy days when we all ran 21 stud flatheads, his son Danny Letner drove the car, a '34 Ford coupe. He was a top driver in the Calif Jalopy Association and ran at Culver City speedway when the races were televised and Bill Welsh was the announcer. those were the fun days. I was just a young kid, but I drove there and all over Southern California, Balboa Stadium in San Diego was one of my favorites. Jack Clegg

[Ol' Ron]

A frind of mine has a set of Elco hears on his roadster. I had to clearance the combustion chamber for the L-100 cam. Chamber didn't look any different than the Offy, Edelbrock chambers. In modern engines with dual plugs the second plug usually fires 3-4 degrees after the primary plug.

[48-710]

Back in the mid 60's dad raced a flathead powered boat. He used a twin 4 cyl dissy set up with two coils. The housing was sand cast and it had two right angle drives in it for the dissys. I think the dissy were out of an Austin or some thing similar. The set worked great and helped with keeping the water out of the dissys!!. I had them on a Merc motor in my roadster for a while but being so high up I couldn't run a fan, so driving on the street was limited.

[Mr 42]

Originally Posted by BUBBAS IGNITION

The dual plug brings more to the story other than hp. By using twin coils that makes it really two four cylinder ignition systems. This would allow longer periods of coil saturation or build up offering hotter spark all thru the rpm range especially at higher rpm. The coils would run cooler and offer a hotter spark output.....

Now the positioning of the dual plugs is another discussion that could go on and on for sure.....using the Nash 16 cap etc the firing cycles between cylinders at the head would be spaced at 45 degrees between sparks...
Anyone wish to elaborate on hp and these events ???

What do you base the statement that there is 45 degrees between sparks? Have you run it?

OK the rotor may be setup with a 45 degress difference but that can be taken care of by the cap.
And when looking at mine the breakers seam to be placed almost opposite of each other.

Her is my friends Elco Twin Flathead (yes he have those odd discbrakes to ;-) )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdgjE...gyxzsNXh3Kkih7




Here is a picture of a Australian Dual plug installation Home made adapter.

[Tim Ayers]

Sure, make sense about the coils having time to re-charge, cool or what ever.

In regards to cam, wouldn't you want a bigger cam to get more charge in there? My logic is that could the second firing cause a lean condition if the first plug ignited most of the fuel charge with the first spark?

Or is the timing so quick that it doesn't matter. Really curious about that.

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

Yes i was refering to the rotor not the actual spark triggering plate. I will when i get this one back together ,run on a machine a do a couple pics and video of the actual cylinder spark spacing etc.
Wow your lower picture is using two grant flamethrowers etc ( we do those for a flathead as well) that would require 4 coils and two complete Grant units . 4 sets of contacts or i guess you could just use half each one and dual coils.
The visual aspect is worth way more than the hp increase..... rbg

Originally Posted by Mr 42

What do you base the statement that there is 45 degrees between sparks? Have you run it?

OK the rotor may be setup with a 45 degress difference but that can be taken care of by the cap.
And when looking at mine the breakers seam to be placed almost opposite of each other.

Her is my friends Elco Twin Flathead (yes he have those odd discbrakes to ;-) )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdgjE...gyxzsNXh3Kkih7




Here is a picture of a Australian Dual plug installation Home made adapter.

[Ol' Ron]

I think the set up M 42's photos would be more efficent than the single rotoe cap combination. You could control the timing of each distributor . A coupla Bubbas converted SBC distributors would work great.

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

Originally Posted by itslow

Looks like a hand-made unit made from a stock distributor plate and some lengths of square aluminum tubing. Not cast like the more common angle drive or dual distributor units.

Actually it is a casting , you can see the casting lines. I also at first look thought it was square pieces.

[Ol' Ron]

I think it's homemade, I've seeh one before and I made one for my vertical distributoe, by modifying the stock one.

[JWL]

I think Bubba knew what to say but did not say it----the dual plug thing is not like having 2 four cylinder systems and it does not allow for cooler coil temperatures, etc. etc. The dual plug system requires 16 "sparks" from 2 eight cylinder systems. I believe the Nash twin 8 distributor was one such example that was used to get the 16 sparks from a single distributor with two coils and 16 wire posts on the cap.

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

Originally Posted by JWL

I think Bubba knew what to say but did not say it----the dual plug thing is not like having 2 four cylinder systems and it does not allow for cooler coil temperatures, etc. etc. The dual plug system requires 16 "sparks" from 2 eight cylinder systems. I believe the Nash twin 8 distributor was one such example that was used to get the 16 sparks from a single distributor with two coils and 16 wire posts on the cap.

Thanks for the correction , i wasnt very clear on the first post etc.
I spent a little time at the shop today and will have the parts cleaned up tomorrow etc.
The Nash unit is two eight cylinder ignition systems with a dwell adjustment for each set of contacts, the advance is early autolite ( very much like a chrysler cast iron unit) and it also has a sync plate to allow some adjustment to the timing between the two sparks. I think in the past we have adjusted this to fire both at exact same time.
I will dig up some more info on the twin spark later this week. There is a couple cars being produced today using twin plugs per cylinder for various reasons etc as well.

Bubba

[John Kennedy]

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Pretty fascinating stuff there!

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

Ok guys , got er done today and shipped back to the customer .
Heres what i learned this week end and today.

The Nash six and eight was dual coil with two plugs each cylinder. Nash said in their adds:

For 1929, twin ignition was added to the two OHV engines and all series utilized aluminum pistons. Twin ignition meant there were two spark plugs for each cylinder, two coils as well as two sets of points and 2 condensers in one distributor. Nash claimed the improved combustion resulted in greater horsepower and greater fuel economy. In addition, greater reliability was achieved as the engine could run well even if one side of the ignition system failed. Unit was used until 1936 and maybe after.

(A note: the new Hemi also uses two spark plugs per cylinder, and some modern engines rely on spark plugs with two electrodes. The principle was sensible and ahead of its time.

The pics below show the story in detail.
The spark from each set of eight is set to occur at the same time timing of the spark is determined by the distributor position and distributor cam etc.
I suppose spark timing per plug per cylinder could be tuned if needed by adjusting the contacts and adjusting the sync of each set of points.
The advance ( autolite) is a great little unit and is almost perfect for the flathead setting of 28 degrees at 2500 rpm.
This distributor is very well made and ran on tester at 6000 plus rpm.

Special care must be taken with spark plug gaps ( .025 max) to prevent burning up the cap and rotor system. Timing is crutial and the use of correct resistance ignition coils is also a must do.
I suggest 1.5 ohm coil with 1.5 ohm ballast to keep the current low in the primary system.
Cylinder to cylinder distance (even with large cap) is very small and spark jump over or cross fire is easy. Wiring ( plug wires) must be in very good condition and connections must be good as well.

All in all a very good setup for the flathead !!!!!!

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

a few more .......
A couple more notes , advance unit, contacts and distributor were ultrasonically cleaned. The ultrasonic unit even removes te oxidation from the contact points making them very usable with a light file ..
High ( .40mfds) condensors are used to prevent contact arching.........the best there is ...

[rotorwrench]

You mentioned the cross over firing that can occur so I thought I'd add some observations that come from experience with cross firing. I've found that any type of contaminants on the insulated surfaces can cause cross fire to happen. If a person cleans the components of all traces of contamination, it will minimize the tendency for the spark to travel where it's not wanted. Even finger prints in the wrong place can contribute to this. Clean it well then clean it again before plugging everything together and it will definitely help prevent the pesky cross firing.

I can see how those set ups could have a problem with cross over due to the close proximity of electrodes and high tension sources.

[BUBBAS IGNITION]

Originally Posted by rotorwrench

You mentioned the cross over firing that can occur so I thought I'd add some observations that come from experience with cross firing. I've found that any type of contaminants on the insulated surfaces can cause cross fire to happen. If a person cleans the components of all traces of contamination, it will minimize the tendency for the spark to travel where it's not wanted. Even finger prints in the wrong place can contribute to this. Clean it well then clean it again before plugging everything together and it will definitely help prevent the pesky cross firing.

I can see how those set ups could have a problem with cross over due to the close proximity of electrodes and high tension sources.

Yep clean it well then spray with WD40 to make it even more resistant...

[Tim Ayers]

Dang. Another rare bird lives to see another day. Nice work there, Jim!

[777ag]

Originally Posted by jack in san diego

The Elco twin engine and distributor was the brainchild of Evans and Letner.

They weren't the first though...
Alfa Romeo GP cars of the teens were the first to use twin plugs.
Then Nash mass produced the Twin 6 & 8 engine from 1929 -1941.
In 1934, R&R Manufacturing, Robert Roof's company developed a twin plug flat head Ford V8 conversion for racing that utilized the Nash Twin 8 distributor mounted directly to the 3 bolt timing cover.

In 1939 Eddie Meyer was convinced by Sandy Belond to alter his cylinder head casting to accommodate twin plugs because Belond was working with Sam Hanks and Roy Richter to come up with a way to light a degreaser that they were using as a fuel additive and that additive was nitromethane! These facts have been verified by Ed Iskenderian who worked on the timing advancer of Belond's twin plug V8 roadster and by Bud Meyer who drilled the twin plug Meyer heads for Belond before the War.
By 1942 they had it figured it out and at a REVS Timing meet in 1942 the roadster ran 125.854 mph on Muroc dry lake.

I attached a pic of the Roof catalog, the Belond roadster's V8 with a Scintilla 3 bolt, 90-degree drive and the correct modifications to run the Nash Twin 8 with the Scintilla. The 2 bolt adapter, the one with 4 holes, was not produced until after the War.

Finally just for fun I added a link of the Belond dual plug engine running on nitro:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLFTO...&feature=share

[Gary-UK]

I am running a Nash Twin with Roof heads. Bubba checked my ignition over and it is sweet, hard part was getting the heads to seal up!

[Ol' Ron]

In The lower picture the modofied fron cover running 2 distributors would offer the best od two worlds. Less expensive to build and better tuning options. Not to mention you could use 2 SBC distributors with replacement parts at your nearest NAPA store.

[onecool1929]

Anybody know how to get a hold of Norm Frick. He has a dual distributor mount that runs two distributors for the dual spark heads. I am trying to get a hold of Norm Frick as I would like to run one of his set ups. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Michael

[Yoyodyne]

Here's a setup in a friend's 40. Nash distributor, I think it's in a 49-53 timing cover.
I hope these photos show up, they are in my album on the HAMB, not on the barn.

[Jason in TX]

And then there were these:

[denverslim]

Bubba, how do we contact you?...slim

[JSeery]

PM him here on the barn.