While reading some of the discussion on Jay's SOHC, thought I'd share some info on the crank trigger setup that I have on my 496 Genesis engine. The balancer, brackets, standoffs, and oilpump drive mandrel (not shown) are all from Innovator's West in Kansas. Don't know why they don't show this stuff on their website, but the price was reasonable and quality was top notch. Timing pointer is adjustable as well. Nicely engineered, has flying magnets built into the balancer.



66 Fairlane GT Silver Blue "BRUTE" Genesis 496/C4
66 Fairlane GT Nightmist Blue 428/TKO600
66 F250 Camper Special Rangoon Red 428/4-speed
2000 Lincoln LS Sport 5-speed

Realy nice! How are you distributing the spark? COP?

Using a MSD-AL3 and a stock Ford distributor with the advance pinned. The AL3 has a 20 degree start retard, so no other advance is needed.

66 Fairlane GT Silver Blue "BRUTE" Genesis 496/C4
66 Fairlane GT Nightmist Blue 428/TKO600
66 F250 Camper Special Rangoon Red 428/4-speed
2000 Lincoln LS Sport 5-speed

Just take every other tooth off the reluctor with a signal wire from your pickup to 4 double out coils. Use the box and 4 teeth in the dizzy to send a primary signal to a coil and it fires one on power and one on overlap. A line of 4 sequenced 1-2-3-4 like an Electromotive set wired to the right cylinders. I am working on one myself slowly but surely. One thought I had was to use the mechanical advance in the distributor with the 4 teeth and a rotor that just grounds the coil in sequence to cause a field collapse. It would be pretty simple then because the pickup would internally signal like it always does with a square wave, and the rotor/ ground would allow mechanical, even vacuum advance with just 4 primary ground signals wired to each of the coils to spike, all hot but not firing until they ground. All without a computer map.

Just some thoughts.

I have a complete setup I picked up for my 514 Falcoon at the Goodguys meet in Pleasanton, MSD 8, coil, limiter, dizzy, crank trigger, wires- only bad thing is the dizzy & trigger are for big Chebby, but the price was too right, and I can sell the dizzy, and a 351-460 MSD dizzy came with it. Shouldn't be too dificult to fab up some bracketry to mount the crank trigger setup on either a 385 or an FE, and I have a bunch of nice aluminum angle to work with. There was an MSD crank trigger for an FE on epay a while back, bid on it but it went pretty high- I don't think they make it any more?

and all I want to do is get my dash lites working in the mighty Mav this winter!!! What the hell language is that you're speaking?? scary

I used a MSD for a 429 on a FE, used the 429 balancer. Had to make a timing marker, works well, RWJ

Wish I had paid more attention in school!