electronic ignition on Ford 2000

Do you recommend changing from points to electronic ignition? Did you also change the coil?

depends?

also.. there are 2 2000's a 4 cyl and 3 cyl.

is there anything particular you are trying to gain.. or is their a repair issue?

is the unit already 12v ( 3 cyl, or converted 4 cyl gasser, or diesel 4 cyl )

i would not reccomend going to ei on 6v.

if you want ei, and have a good starting machine already... you can go for it.. it's your money.. your gains may not be much.

if you have a poor starting 12v machine i urge you to get it fixed up first before thinking about the ei. ei may help with a few issues.. but is not a fix for other problems.

give us a lil more background.

soundguy

I am just trying to get out of changeing points every year. It is a 3 cylinder, gas.

Soundguy --

Why don't you recommend converting 6v? I've done it recently on two tractors and not had a problem yet. Should I be watching for something, or even flip back to points? By the way, I didn't notice much change on the 4-cylinder 4000, but the 801 starts a lot quicker with the electronic ignition (and, yes, that was all I changed when I converted).

I'm not challenging your recommendation -- I value your opinion. Thanks.

ok.. that's what we needed to know.

very likely you have 1 of 2 issues if you have to change points every year.

1, you may not have the resistor wire in line with the coil .. thus drawing high current, thus shortening the life of the points.

or 2 ( or a combination ).. poor electrical stills and breaker handling technique.

for instance.. you may be setting the contacts too close and letting them arc and burn.. or too far and letting to omuch kv build up.

your dizzy bushing may be bad leading to irregular point gap. you may not be keeping hte feeler gauge cleaned so that it is leaving oily deposits on the breakers and they are burning.

you may be using cheap breakers and they are burning or wearing out or are not made 100% correct to adjust.

you may not be lubing the rubbing block sufficiently to keep it from wearing out.

you may have a cracked or ill fitting dizzy cap that allows excess moisture in, thus leading to reduced points life due to corrosion.

I'd address those issues first.. before deciding to convert to ei.

I don't own a single gasser that gets a points changer per year.

in fact, I don't even usually clean them every year or regap them as long as they run correctly.

I have many units with points on them in the 5-10 yer range, including some that I have not changed the points on at all.. thus still running the same set as when I got them...

also.. poor electrical maintenance can lead to problems.. bad or dirty contacts.. loose wires.. etc.. etc..

soundguy

ei is a voltage sensitive device. from what I have read ont he current generation ei, and from what I know of electronics in general.. most of these units don't like to operate under 4.5v

that doesn't leave alot of wiggle room.. .. for instance.. 1.5v

now put a hungry starter on there.. or a battery that has sat a few months.. or some cold weather.. or a dirty terminal here or there.

not hard to get close to the threshold where the ei might not fire.

that's why I said if you are going to go on an ei.. go ahead and go for 12v too.

I'm not an ei guy.. I admit it. I have sufficient electrical skills that all my points tractors start.. thus there is no incentive for me to invest 100+ bucks per machine to achieve the same thing i have right now.. good reliable starters... that said.. again... IF I went ei.. I'd also go 12v..

soundguy

what sounder is trying to say, is that a good set of points will sometimes go for 20 years....

however I've had em where if it rains within 10 miles, the tractor would not fire.. Even a low dew point and that dog would not fire. Seems this tractor had once had the dcap left off in the rain, and I tried for 15 years to dry out the distribitor and still had problems when I sold it 15 years later. In this case an EI would have save tons of agrivation and a few curse words.. I always keep it parked every night at the barn and near the compressor so I could blow out the moisture and get it to fire. no amount of wd40 or blowing it out would work long term. Went through several caps, dustcovers, and a zillion points and condensors.. bottom line was that if the humidity was high, it would not fire.

This January it will be 6 years since I put EI in my 3 cyl 2000. The tractor started and ran just fine on points before but I had the extra $ and wanted to give EI a try. What I noticed at the time was the tractor started instantly and seemed to run better under load.
When I sold that tractor and bought a 3000 I kept/switched the EI. Other than that I have not TOUCHED my ignition since - about 4-500 hours - though I have checked the timing a couple of times.
I think it was money well spent especially on a 3 cyl with the goofy, dificult to get at distributer.
As for that distributer, what I have learned is to pull the plug wires out of the dist. cap and remove the cap completely out of the tractor. Then it is easier to get to your points.
To replace, remember that #1 cyl is marked on the cap, firing order is 123 and dist turns CCW.

PS, welcome to the board.

I put new points on my 3 cylinder 4000 when I first bought the tractor about 4 years ago just out of principal, as everything was working fine when I bought it, but I changed the plugs, plug wires, points, condenser, rotor and cap just to make sure I had known good parts in everything just in case I had to troubleshoot anything down the road. I've only put about 15 hours per year on it since then so the ignition parts only have about 60 hours on them, but the points, plugs, distributor cap & rotor, everything's still working great and it starts on less than one revolution every time and runs smooth and strong. I don't see any need to go to electronic ignition since I'm not having any problems, and if I were to have a problem, I would troubleshoot it before upgrading to EI. If my troubleshooting showed a problem that was likely to reoccur, and I thought that EI would keep it from reoccurring, then I would consider the upgrade.