Lil4X
Elio Addict
An ignition kill switch would probably be most cost effective - one to disable only the ignition or even the FI, not necessarily the starter that would require a larger and more difficult to place switch. Place it somewhere in reach under the dash so it's not obvious.
I accidentally had one of these on my old college-bound Valiant. Dad and a few of his EE friends were developing an electronic ignition just for fun in their off hours, and while I was home for the summer, my car became their test mule. With a switch on the dash you could go from conventional to electronic ignition, but it wasn't as simple as just the flick of a switch. Back in the early '60's there were no solid-state devices that would handle the current required to trigger the coil and fire the plugs - well not outside milspec diodes that were CRAZY expensive. So I ended up with a little sub-chassis under the hood bolted to the firewall with a dynamotor (haven't heard of one of those for a while, have you?) a couple of vacuum tubes and a pair of thyristors that glowed an other-worldly purple. Because the dynamotor had to spin up to provide AC to the secondary ignition circuits, the "electronic" ignition wouldn't go hot for about ten seconds after throwing the dyno switch on the instrument panel and the requisite warmup of the tubes. Thus there was an unused center position on the changeover switch under the dash that shut down the voltage to the coil (my engineering crew having only a DPTT switch in stock - at least it prevented them from electrocuting themselves while tinkering with it).
That summer I got to struggle with the development mule - a bit of an embarrassment on dates - switch on the ignition, throw the switch to power up the dynamotor, wait 10 seconds, check the postion of the changeover switch and hit the starter. Well, it worked . . . most of the time - unless the "engineering committee" made some changes while I was in the shower. "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed" it reproduced the starting drill of the Batmobile. I eventually found that "center" position on the changeover switch to be most useful for disabling the car when parked in strange places. Heck, if you really wanted to mess with would-be thieves, leave the keys in it. Nobody, but NOBODY short of a EE doctorate and a couple hours tracing circuits was going to start that thing.
I accidentally had one of these on my old college-bound Valiant. Dad and a few of his EE friends were developing an electronic ignition just for fun in their off hours, and while I was home for the summer, my car became their test mule. With a switch on the dash you could go from conventional to electronic ignition, but it wasn't as simple as just the flick of a switch. Back in the early '60's there were no solid-state devices that would handle the current required to trigger the coil and fire the plugs - well not outside milspec diodes that were CRAZY expensive. So I ended up with a little sub-chassis under the hood bolted to the firewall with a dynamotor (haven't heard of one of those for a while, have you?) a couple of vacuum tubes and a pair of thyristors that glowed an other-worldly purple. Because the dynamotor had to spin up to provide AC to the secondary ignition circuits, the "electronic" ignition wouldn't go hot for about ten seconds after throwing the dyno switch on the instrument panel and the requisite warmup of the tubes. Thus there was an unused center position on the changeover switch under the dash that shut down the voltage to the coil (my engineering crew having only a DPTT switch in stock - at least it prevented them from electrocuting themselves while tinkering with it).
That summer I got to struggle with the development mule - a bit of an embarrassment on dates - switch on the ignition, throw the switch to power up the dynamotor, wait 10 seconds, check the postion of the changeover switch and hit the starter. Well, it worked . . . most of the time - unless the "engineering committee" made some changes while I was in the shower. "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed" it reproduced the starting drill of the Batmobile. I eventually found that "center" position on the changeover switch to be most useful for disabling the car when parked in strange places. Heck, if you really wanted to mess with would-be thieves, leave the keys in it. Nobody, but NOBODY short of a EE doctorate and a couple hours tracing circuits was going to start that thing.
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