The Mallory Unilite Distributor 4562201 was recommended to me. Do any of you have any experience with this unit? It doesn't have vacuum advance, is that good?

_________________
Racing Dart

No vacumm advance. Not good for a street driver. Question, why do you want to spend over $300 for a distributor? Just use a good condition mopar electronic distributor, and do a recurve to match your engine. You would have to tailor the curve on the Mallory, also.

_________________
Charrlie_S
65 Valiant 100 2dr post 170 turbo
66 Valiant Signet 170 nitrous
64 Valiant Signet
64 Valiant 4dr 170
64 Valiant 4dr 225

No vac advance= bad economy.its really more a performance orientated setup. "Back in the day" when fuel was cheap many guys used no vac advance and didn't care,but for a street engine you will find a vac advance will give you a much nicer driving engine.Im no big fan of Mallory stuff,it's OK,but I had an old twin point on a smallblock ford,it lasted years,but not without a lot of TLC to keep it together. People slam Chinese made stuff,often with good reason,but the distributor I used was no better than a good cheapo Chinese unit in my books.Do yourself a favour,buy a Mopar electronic unit,do the HEI conversion and you'll have a very capable ignition system that will still be running when the Mallory unit gets all loose and sloppy!

Hey Mallory says it has Mechanical Advance. Does that work instead of Vacuum Advance?

_________________
Racing Dart

All mechnical advance makes getting any kind of highway economy (MPG) hard to acheive...the mechanical advance is determined primarily by the rpm to set your advance, and the vacuum advance would set it's advance above the normal distributor's mechanical advance by the load on the engine via the manifold vaccuum as read from the port at the carb...

Take these examples of why or why not (note these are generalizations and the specific tailor of the curve will depend on car weight, rear ratio, transmission, wheel size, driving style, highway cruise speed, intent of the vehicle...etc...)

For a slant- typical full mechanical + base( or static) timing = 30 degrees...at standard highway cruise RPM or when passing (or WOT drag racing).

When drag racing, you are at wide open throttle and no vacuum advance is present in a standard distributor (manifold reading will be 0 or close to 0)...so you can tailor it's mechanical advance to provide what is needed at WOT without much effort.

When the car is at cruise and then add the extra advance for fuel economy when the throttle plates are partially closed but the car is hurtling along at 65mph with high vacuum applied to the vacuum advance can add another 13-22 degrees of advance giving a slant six car that 21+ mpg you are looking for. (So say 30 degrees mech+static and say 20 more degrees vacc. advance = 50 degrees total advance)

So looking at highway driving...you are set to 30 degrees, and are going to another city the extra 20 degrees makes it about 50....you go to pass a truck and floor it...the 20 degrees goes away and you have 30 degrees only of mech advance (to keep detonation from occuring from too much advance while passing-low manifold vacuum, high intake turbulence, rich mixture from power valve, high load on car to move it "now").

With an all mech distributor to keep your mileage up, you will now have to set it to get 50 degrees at cruise rpm....problem here exists when you go to pass and the rpms go up as kickdown occurs and you are still at or above 50 degrees of advance and the fuel mix is lit way too early and now you have heavy pinging going on (engine says 30 is fine, but en extra 20 burns up the mix too quickly for the load and no it's hammering the combustion chamber with detonation)...there is no way on a curve or linear ignition respring to get it to let out that extra "economy" timing wihtout lowering your rpms or just "not passing". You might be able to get away with wiring up a micro switch and some kind of MSD retard box to do this, but it's going to be tricky at best and may not be the most fuel efficient...this will be up to your skills as an electrical engineer and distributor recurve technician...

So....if you are just 100% racing, the Mallory might be just fine, set the springs and stops and max of 30 degrees advance (or a little less if very high compression) and let it rip. You can save yourself the big $$$ and just repspring an EI distributor and be just fine.

If you intend to drive it regularly on the street and want to retain the fuel economy, you will be getting an EI distributor with vacuum advance and tailor it for your needs (drag racing? Take the hose off the vacc. advance pod and plug it with a screw or golf tee...time to drive home, hook it back up). If you just leave it at 30 degrees you might see about 15 mpg highway or so in a mid-60's A-body (optimistically), if you use the vacc. advance and dial it in correctly 24-26 is most likely.


-D.Idiot

I must plead ignorance here. Is the Mallory unilte for the slant new production?
Sam

_________________

It's an aftermarket mechanical advance only race distributor offered by Mallory (been around a while but they are new out of the box, but a few racers have used them- although the old school boys just go EI and lock the timing for racing...)

Is this a reasonable alternative for EFI where timing is ECU controlled? Does the material and craftsmanship make it better than a 40 year old Mopar unit with 200k miles on it? Or is it real junk? Just asking.

Sam

_________________

It's good quality and you can lock the mechanism, but since ESC distributors are still easy to come by and cheap to refurbish to new standards, I can't see plunking the $450 price tag over a $40 total cost to refurb an old ESC distributor (and if you do have a problem with it, no parts available over the counter, you get to talk to Mallory about it...).

http://mallory-ignition.com/dist-chry-l ... -unil.html

-D.Idiot

AGREED! $450 is expensive. Thanks.
Sam

_________________