Don't know about US spec buses, but we only got electronic ignition on the T25, all Bay windows came with points. some might argue that points are better, but the way they make them today, i beg to differ. 90% of all brake down calls I get from club members in distress end up being ignition related... mostly burned points. If you're lucky you might find an original distributor from a later type4 or watercooled boxer, but I wasn't - can't find them. :- So i went down to the local junkyard and picked up an old Golf mk2 distributor, jacks, ignition module and coil (almost all 80's & 90's VW's, Audi's & Seat's with 1.6 and 1.8 engines had these distributors) They don't fit in the aircooled blocks because they use a pinion gear to run, but I can show you how to make them work. The top part is almost identical, so basically you need to switch all the internals into your old distributor. The body height is the same, the weights are the same, and the shaft fits... The axle is in two parts. Once you divide the two halfs of the shaft, you exchange the top part (camshaft) with the hall sensor shaft. Now comes the tricky part. the hall sensor sits about 5mm lower in the body than the points did. this means you have to carefully measure and drill new fixing holes in the dizzy body, otherwise the cap won't fit. Use your dremel tool to cut for the jack insert and a new hole for the vacuum pump. I took the chance to polish everything while it was bare because i'm just so fancy And there you have it... i haven't got to the part where I would wire it up, so i'll update when i get to doing that, but you just follow the watercooled wiring diagram. Is it worth it? probably not... but I have nothing better to do, and money that i'd otherwise spend on petronix ignition, i can now exchange for beer crates.
I've got a distributor from a type 25 with electronic ignition, I need to know how to wire it up without the power unit it needs? Look forward to the next post!
Its pretty straight forward if you have the original wire installation with the jacks from your golf/vanagon/passat/other. you need the jacks to connect the hall sensor with the TCI module, other than that there are 3 wires, the thick black or brown one is ground, the green one is coil negative and the one left over is coil positive. on the module pins: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 pin 1: - Coil negative (connector 1/-) pin 2: - Ground pin 3: - Hall senzor negative/- (left pin) pin 4: - Coil pozitive (connector 15/+) pin 5: - Hall senzor pozitive/+ (righthand pin) pin 6: - Hall senzor neutral/0 (center pin) pin 7: - X (not connected - tachometer signal) Wire color: 1 - green 2 - Brown or black 3 - brown / white 4 - black 5 - red / black 6 - green / white 7 - X You DO need the TCI module and ignition coil for electronic ignition taken from whatever car you took the distributor off. here it is installed... done about 20,000 km since installed, works perfectly. If you have difficulty connecting or don't understand something, i can try and draw a diagram for you or explain better.
