On 11/18/2013, Fred Winterburn in Ripley, Ontario, Canada wrote:
"I liked your 2 cents worth about using electronic ignition. I am a real fan of points because of their simplicity and the fact that they are not battery voltage sensitive (at least as a trigger). However, one can have the best of both worlds with a properly made CD ignition that has a switch to revert back to Kettering. I've used these for years with great success and now I also build some units that are universal for positive or negative ground. This is using a variation of the robust design that goes back 50 years to my late father's (Lloyd Winterburn) original patent that spawned production of the Hyland Ignition system in 1963".


On 11/18/2013 Fred Winterburn wrote:
"They are indeed rare. I would guess that about 10 thousand or so were built before my father canceled his license agreement with them in 1965. They were well made but some had early failure due to the polyester potting shrinking which sometimes caused a component lead to separate. I have a 1963 positive ground prototype that wasn't potted and it still works fine, plus some other examples that did many years on cars and still work perfectly well even with visible cracks in the potting. The one I am making is based on the old design but has better components and is not potted so that it could be repaired if need be. It will also work with RVI style tachometers and voltage sensing tachometers. This one is a bit of a hybrid in that the initial spark is CD but there is an inductive component as well that extends the duration of the spark. I detuned the inductive portion for these production units so that the duration doesn't get much longer than 0.5ms. Depending on the coil it was causing spark overlap otherwise at high rpm".

Below, article written by Fred Winterburn, Summer 2013.
ELECTRONIC IGNITION -- (click for 356-KB pdf)


Winterburn vs Kettering ignition (click for 58-KB pdf)


Winterburn vs Racing CD ignition (click for 48-KB pdf)