In the most recent Z that’s in getting parted, I found what must be the absolute pinnacle of ignition technology.  Ok, maybe I’m thinking of 1978 , but anyway….

Anyone remember the brand name “HeathKit”? 

Heathkit has a place in my life for sure. My Dad and I built a number of kits in the late 60’s including, if you can believe it, our first color TV. Then shortly after we added the remote control option. It was an low ultra sonic transmitter. I could hear the beep tones when you push the buttons. The volume and channel knobs were powered and turned by a little teenie weenie fan belt and motor. You could see the knobs spinning from across the room! 

It definitely drove me to being the hands on tinkerer and eventually EE that I am proud now to be.  

 

 

Edited November 18, 20213 yr by zKars

heath kits and radio shack p box kits were a lot of fun, I mostly built the P box stuff. The heath kits were clearly more advanced stuff. 

Edited November 18, 20213 yr by Dave WM

Assembled several Heathkit and Dynaco amps, preamps and tuners for myself and friends as a teen. I still have some of the Dynaco stuff.

Did not know Heathkit was into automotive ignition though!

Looks like you can still find NOS stuff out there.  I'd pick a few links but the Google page has too much good stuff to choose just a few.

https://www.google.com/search?q=heathkit+cp-1060&rlz=1C1SQJL_enUS862US862&oq=heathkit+cp-1060&aqs=chrome..69i57.13132j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Here you can see the Model Number and serial number. Just barely. 

CP-1060 is the model number.

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/heath_capacitive_discharge_ignition_cp_1060.html

https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/heathkit-model-cp-1060-capacitive-discharge-ignition.929262/

This tag is about as sun baked and faded as the rest of this 72….

Best I don’t look at the google links, I don’t have time to be soldering a Heathkit oscilloscope or something silly…

Edited November 18, 20213 yr by zKars

WOW! A trip down memory lane. I actually built one of those for my VW bug. I could not believe how much more power I got after installation....LOL. 0-60 in 2 or 3 minutes.

Cheers, Mike

I built a Heathkit radio when I was a kid.  Loved working on it, but it never worked well.  I had a lot of trouble sorting the resistors because they all seemed to have the same color bands. 

Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls, But Violet Gives Willingly doesn't work well if you're color blind. 😁

That looks like the Mark Ten B I have on my car. This pic is off eBay but mine is the same.

That looks nearly identical to the Heath unit. Even that little red terminal board on the end of the leads looks the same as what I saw on mine before I un-ceremoniously chopped all the connections off the coil. 

The distributor was still using points, I was kind of expecting to see some old optical coupler stuffed in there, but no, still depends on the points to trigger spark. Definitely first generation stuff. 

Mine still has the points, it is a CDI ignition that boost the spark at the coil. 

The coil connections are the rare part to find, sad to hear to chopped them up. I would have bought them as spares. The are fragile. 

Here is the ad for it from an old catalog out of Portland OR. 

Edited November 19, 20213 yr by Terrapin Z
text

3 hours ago, ETI4K said:

Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls, But Violet Gives Willingly

There's a newer cleaner version of that. I've tried to make it work for me, but it just won't stick. I always revert to that old school version.

And yes... I'm not color blind, but I bet when everything is brown, brown, lighter brown, tan, darker brown it makes it hard to figure out what goes where!