So I’ve put up with the flat spots caused by my 009 dizzy for too long. The only trouble is my 34 pict 3 doesn’t have the pipe inlet on the side to allow fitting of one with a vacuum advance . I think it must be to do with it being on a Brazilian t1 engine? Anyway, Mike @mikedjames once suggested to me at techenders that a hole could be drilled in the side of my carb to accept the said pipe. I’m just a bit worried to do so in case it goes wrong or doesn’t work, as my carb is working great, and despite the flat spots on pick up, the van drives really well. I don’t doubt Mike one bit but I’m just a bit wary and I don’t want to have to get a new carb as well as a new dizzy! What do we think? Shall I just leave it alone? P.
I've done it in the past for the rear port on a PICT. I'll check tomorrow on one of mine to see if there's a plug/passageway on the side.
Here y'go. Pic of a rather grubby 34 PICT 3. If you've got a plugged passage where the brass take-off tube is, plus the channel running to the base of the carb, likely you can drill out the plug and epoxy a length of brass tubing in for the dissy vac take-off.
Marvellous. I’ll take a look when I’m next at my garage. You are a good man. Thank you very much. Do you know if the repro vacuum advance dizzies are any good?
You're taking pot luck with something like an Accu/CrappuSpark (see many posts on here), but you may be lucky. Unfortunately, noone seems to sell the Mexican Bosch 034 jobs any more, which were pretty good. Could find a used one in good shape, or if you want to push the boat out fit a 123. V pricey, but you'll never have to touch it again once it's fitted
Cheers @snotty . Shame coz the ones for around £70 are reduced to £49 at the mo at ssp. I suppose there’s a reason for that. I’ll be on the look out for a second hand one I think. Did VW make the original dizzy with the vacuum advance?
I'd get a £49 one, see how it goes. Have they got points in? Yes, originals had vac advance. No van ever had a 009.
Might be lucky, although the quality of points/condensers seem to have gone downhill these days. Use your old ones! On the Crapusparks, seems to be the modules that are a bit flakey.
Yes - condensers/capacitors made in damp corners of the world are a problem. And you can use one of the cheaper SVDA distributors if you set it up at maximum centrifugal advance of 28 degrees at high rpm rather than relying on setting it at 7 or 8 degrees at idle.
I never change the condenser unless it fails. I was told once that they are often dodgy off the shelf. If you got a good one keep it.
One thing with condensers is that they use a self-healing technology ..I put one of my failed ones on a a 1000 volt power supply with a resistor and it sat there arcing for 20 seconds at about 150 volts then healed up and then blocked 1000 volts quite happily.. So a good one may fail then recover while a bad one just keeps arcing each time the points open. Eventually even with a good condenser the capacity goes down and the points start burning faster and the spark weakens..
