The Fordson Tractor Pages Forum

I have a '62 Dexta Petrol and I live in Michigan USA. Parts are difficult at best to locate and purchase. Today, while preparing to hook up the farrow, it started popping badly. A quick inspection and I found the contact points had broken, the spring snapped. While this problem is not unusual, these were brand new points back in March of this year. I want to upgrade to electronic ignition but where do I find a Petronix kit? Should I use Ford, Lucas, what application will work?

I too have wondered about fitting electronic ignition to Dotty but when I looked at the cost I found I could buy lots of sets of point, enough to see out my lifetime.
I put a Lucas one on my Ford Granada many years ago now, Fords at the time were known to eat points and capacitors and I had many OEM ones let me down if not changed at 5000 miles. After fitting electronic ignition I never had to open the distributor again in 100,000 miles. My son eventually wrote the car off and, like a fool, I let the ignition system go with the car. At that time I was moving onto diesels so did not think I would ever need it.

Well, I found the part I needed. After combing internet catalogues, I called Summit Racing technical support. I gave the guy my distributer number and he found a direct fit Pertronix kit. I must have searched their online lists for over an hour with no luck! The tech support must have access to a better search engine than the public. When I entered my distributer number in the search bar, it came up "no match". It's on the way, should be here by Friday.

Brian, I thought of buying a couple sets of points but with the rapid failure of this set, and the poor timing, I decided to go electronic.

What really twisted me is that when I did the tune up, the advance springs were both loose and damaged in the bottom of the distributer. The advance weights were seized. I had to disassemble the unit by soaking in penetrating oil and tapping on it and twisting until it finally came apart. With no part stores nearby, I went to the local hardware store for replacement springs, guessing on the correct tension, then modifying the length to fit. When I was done, the tractor ran better than ever. It idled perfect (finally!) and had a stronger, smoother top end. When the tip broke off the points I was so mad I could have kicked a kitten! (Just kidding)

I have a field of broken Fordsons...

Brian, I noticed you named your tractors. We call the Dexta "Buck" and the Major "Baby". Buck, because of the flick "Uncle Buck" where John Candy drives a poor running, oil burning Ford and every time he shuts it off, it backfires severely. When I first bought Buck, the carburetor was in horrible shape, partially plugged with rust and leaking. He was difficult to start and backfired every time he was shut off. After fixing the carb, he never backfired again (until Saturday) but the name has stuck. Baby, for two reasons, she is so ugly only a mother could love her, and I had to baby her back to health.

But William, all tractors are WOMEN nothing else could be so ornery.

The Major is Henrietta and has been for 35 years, the Super Major is Super Sue, the Dexta is Dotty after a family friend, the Ferguson is Harriet after Harry Ferguson and the Nuffield is Nuffy. it helps for them to have names when you are talking to them.

Got to go now as they are coming to put me in my little padded cell for the night.

Electronic ignition should help starting and make it run slightly cooler to.......so who is going to be the first to fit a mega jolt to a Dexta petrol then....

Looks like William is Mark.

Dotty fires up the second I press the button, hardly goes over two compressions and I have a number of sets of points in stock for Harriet and her.

One thing I did have happen the other day, she did not start with no spark. The end of a new capacitor had blown completely off. This was a Sparex one.

I would say William is fitting the equivalent of the old Sparkrite optical ignition systems we used to see in the 70s and 80s so retaining the distributor and coil.

The Megajolt is a full distributor less ignition system, something I personally have fitted to a few Rover V8s plus more recently a Type 1 VW air cooled (made a huge difference with this engine, much cooler running, better economy and got around the issue that the aftermarket distributors are rubbish ). This works well and gets around a lot of issues when critical items like the dizzy become very hard to get......clearly not one for the purists though

Mark, that sounds like the one I had on the Granada, mine came in a Lucas box. As I said, it worked very well indeed.

The Pertronix unit fit perfect, specifically made for this Lucas unit (so I'm told) even the grommet fit perfectly. It does start faster and runs smoother from idle to full power. We sorta miss the backfire after shut down, though.

Have you got a part number for the system William? Just in case I win the lottery

Might be useful, these people have a very good reputation for supplying new ignition parts for vintage engines, I'm sure I read that they have some parts specially made for them because the quality of some imports were so poor. I would give them a try, obviously properly made points will not break in their working life. Also I think they do the correct auto advance springs.

http://www.holden.co.uk/displayAgroups. ... e=Ignition

Regards

Ian

Sorry, been busy, Brian, I have the part number at the farm, I can post it later, although the guy I talked to at Summit looked it up for me by the distributer number. I'm not sure how many other models it will fit. It was literally two minutes from opening the box to hitting the starter.