Electronic IG: yes or no

Chris
2 sets of points and 2 condensers and 2 mounting plates are on the way.

Genuine Mallory parts. Lightly used but working good when removed for electronic conversions.

Coming USPS

Chris

Send me a PM with your address and I'll send you some Mallory points and condensers if you want them.

Won't cost you anything

Sounds to me like your resistor is OK and coil voltage is OK too, and the point cleaning seems to have cured your issue at least for now

I previously Said I was getting 7 volts at the coil when hot, and 5 ohms on the resistor. I think my meter was acting up because today I got a crazy volt reading and unplugged my leads a few times and then it started reading a normal reading. Weird.

And the antisiphon valve. I'm not familiar with that. Is that the fuel tank vent?

74SkiNautique wrote: Can anyone check the ohms are there ballast resistors when hot?? I feel like 5 ohms is too much and might explain why boat runs like crap after it gets hot

The parts that Gun Driver listed and I added to earlier are parts are for a Prestolite distributor and I noticed that you have a Mallory while rereading this whole thread. Those parts won't work.

Since it's a 74 you won't have a PCM engine eitherit could be a Waukesha which became PCM.but they had prestolite distributors Figure out what you have as a starting point. You seem to have solved it back in 2012 but you were screwing with points every 25 hours or so

I measured a ballast resistor on a PCM 351 and it was 1.2 ohms cold (edited out some confusing numbers)

Now as far as numbers go, the resistor got up to about 155-160 degrees on the ceramic housing, what the wire coil inside embedded in epoxy got to .....who knows.

This particular boat runs just fine with 7 volts at the coil negative terminal at 1000 rpm, go to 2000 rpm and there is 8.5 volts. 3000 rpm 9.4 volts.

The ignition coil never went over 145 in about an hour of running at various speeds In a handful of boats that I take care of they have coil temps of 140 to maybe 175 under various conditions with no running issues

I also noticed you asked this same electronic ignition question back in 2012, 4 years is long enough to make up your mind, I would think.

If you're staying with points, figure out what you have for a distributor and get stock replacement parts and do a complete tuneup.

Just to steer you to look at other things, have you looked to see if your antisiphon valve is clear. Plenty of people have had a boat that runs for a short time till the fuel flow gets to restricted, you let it sit and some of the crap falls off then you can start it again and repeat the cycle.

I don't recall seeing anywhere that you mentioned whether you had spark or not when it died the second time.

Running in the driveway with no load on the engine isn't gonna tell you much either, you may think everything's great till you hit the water

It's a ford. It says right on the valve cover .020 for points gap. We have never checked the timing before. Coil is about 7 volts when warmed up.

Not unusual to lose 1V thru ignition switch & breaker.

Good to know phatsat67. My grandpa's 1989 SN has about 730 hours. The points and condenser were not replaced until a couple years ago when it has 700 hours. I also think the new points are platinum coated, and older ones were solid platinum. I could be wrong, but inoticed that sanded and gapped points seem to last shorter than brand new ones, I guess because sanding/cleaning them removed the platinum coating? I'm pulling the cap off soon to inspect them. I don't think I've looked in there in 3 years or so when we replaced the cap, rotor, and points/condenser.

Yeah it's always best to change the points and condenser together, Pete.

KENO wrote: The Standard Motor Products condenser to go along with the picture from Gun Driver is part number AL-118. If it's bad the points are gonna be arced and pitted so they might as well be replaced together.

And I'd like to add that it doesn't take very long to trash the point contact faces with a bad condenser. Also, since the transition to China, condensers are know to be bad right out of the box!

Could be and one of the reasons a condenser can go bad is a bad distributor ground. You could take off the hold down bolt and clamp and make sure everything is clean. If you have a wire wheel that would be great but a dremel or scotchbrite pad would work. You then might want to replace the condenser too. After my Dad had similar trouble on a saltwater boat I added a ground wire to my distributor just in case.
I'm running a MSD 8222 coil

Check the voltage at the input to the resistor as well. You may have some IR loss through the key/ignition circuit. The voltage at the resistor input should be close to battery voltage at all times. The only voltage drop should be across the resistor.

What Keno said
Here's a picture with part #s of all the parts (except the condenser) you can get them at a good local auto parts store.

I installed a Electronic system on my brothers Supra, 351W, we used a GM HEI unit that sits on the ford distributor and it worked out very well. Bought it on the internet for around $100. If the HEI ever fails they are available in every parts store around. Worked for us.
We did upgrade the wires and opened the plug gaps to handle the increase plug voltage.
They come with a vacuum advance unit that can be removed to save space and boats don't benefit from vacuum advance systems. One negative they are about 3/4 inch larger all the way around than stock so look and make sure your engine has space to install one of these.

If your wires were arcing on the cap you may want to replace that also.

I personally really like having electronic ignition. It's just one less thing to worry about. But I didn't do a conversion kit. I replaced my Prestolite distributor with a new Mallory with EI built in. My distributor had problems that a conversion kit wouldn't fix like a broken tooth and worn springs. The points in my old distributor were working fine and I probably wouldn't have made the jump for that alone.