I need a coil mounting bracket for the Rover, so I got my CAD on.
When I install the Speeduino I’m planning to ditch the crappy distributor. Theres a couple of reasons for this. First, it’s old and will become unreliable in the future. Second, it allows me to control timing and dwell with the Speeduino, meaning I can go outside the limits of the advance on the distributor.
The coils I picked have been used in some other Megasquirt projects. They are basically VW Golf coils. I’m using a pair of them and running wasted spark. Part number 032 906 106b
I was going to use a pair of Subaru coils, but the VW coils have inbuilt ignitors, the Subaru ones don’t, and I like the vertical lead posts on the VW coil better. It makes for a cleaner install.
Most Rover V8 Megasquirt owners mount their coils on a bracket that mounts to the water pump and the RH head. I couldn’t use the ready-made bracket that is available on the market for this, as I’m not running Ford EDIS coils which are common overseas.
I was intending on making a bracket like that to suit my coils, but decided to go another way when I saw the setup another SD1 owner is using. They mounted their coils in the big open clear space on top of the alternator bracket.
Once again because I’m not using EDIS coils my design had to be different, but I liked the placement and concept, so today I got my CAD on. No, not Computer Aided Design…. but Cardboard Aided Design.
This is where the coils will sit
Mounted to this bracket, which has the alternator and a ground strap mounted to it.
I will be making the mounting plate out of 300x235x2mm Aluminium sheet that I picked up on eBay. Out came the cardboard, and I started to make a template of the mount.
It needs to be solid, so I chose to have tabs bent off it that will bolt to three places on the standard alternator bracket. Two on the RH side, which are the bolts that hold the alternator, and one in the middle of the engine, where the bracket mounts to the head. Even in testing with cardboard this seemed to give a nice solid mounting. Much cutting and measuring, and this is what I got.
You can see the tabs, and the outline for where the coils will mount. This is how the coils will be fitted to the mount
This allows it to clear everything, and it has ample room around the coils for the leads and for cooling. I have also allowed some extra space on the inboard coil so the plug and wiring will still fit.
Which i loosely bolted to the spare bracket, to see how it would fit.
I’ll need to adjust the inboard tab a little to clear the head of the bolt, it’s a bit tight on the CAD. You can see the space I left between the bracket and my mounting plate. This is to clear the grounding strap that is bolted to the bracket, and as an air space to aid with cooling the coils.
I transferred the outline to my sheet of aluminium, ready for cutting.
And that’s where it’s at. I needed to go back to prepping the car for the show tomorrow, but I’ll cut this mount out at some point. I will need to find some long ass screws to actually mount the coils. Off to eBay I go.
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