1010 crawler electronic ignition

[roofdog]

can an electronic ignition be put on a JD 1010c gas crawler,its got a 12 volt battery for starting,and if so how hard to do is it,thanks for any help.

[jdemaris]

can an electronic ignition be put on a JD 1010c gas crawler,its got a 12 volt battery for starting,and if so how hard to do is it,thanks for any help.

Turning wrenches can wear on you just as bad as roofing - I did both.
Only big difference was - sometimes I was turning wrenches inside - instead of being outside fighting snow and rain.

With your 1010 - as I recall, as long as you have the Delco distributor - and not the Wico or Prestolite - you can get a Pertronix kit for it. I'm not sure WHY you want to, though. 1010 isn't exactly high-performance and is reliable and a good starter with the stock system - as long as you have the right coil and resistor in it.

Nice thing about keeping it stock is . . . if anything fails - you can get a part just about anywhere to fix it - regardless if coil, points, cap, rotor, resistor, etc. On the other hand - if you convert to electronic - and something fails - you are probably screwed. You won't find parts local and might have trouble getting certain parts anywhere else. I checked with a few dealers that sell Petronix and none of them stock individual parts. Now, maybe they last forever and you never have to worry? I can't comment too much, but I doubt it.

I've been working on this junk for 40 years and have had many electronic conversions quit in the middle of nowhere. And, often when I tried to get parts, the company was out of business. I had one mishap when my 1969 MGB died in the middle of the Interstate, 150 miles from home. It had a breaker-less, capacitive discharge kit. I was absolutely screwed - until I got lucky. A nearby junkyard actually had a junked MG and I paid $20 for the distributor. I cleaned the points, stuck it in, and drove home just fine. Needless to say, I never converted it back to electronic again.
My 1973 105 horse Chrysler outboard motor did the same in the middle of an Adirondack lake. With that, we had make some parts to convert to standard igntion and the local boat yard said it would never run right with the low-energy igntion. That was 5 years ago, and it runs just as good as it ever did.

[JD440ICD2006]

I have been lured in to thinking that CDI was the way to go too. I am glad that you shared your real time experiences with us so that I did not make that expensive mistake.
The way I understand it, there is an advantage to replacing the points as they are constantly changing dwell and gap as they wear.
But, to your point, (no pun intended), points are easy to come by, install in a few minutes, and will always work if everything else is working.

[jdemaris]

I have been lured in to thinking that CDI was the way to go too. I am glad that you shared your real time experiences with us so that I did not make that expensive mistake.
The way I understand it, there is an advantage to replacing the points as they are constantly changing dwell and gap as they wear.
But, to your point, (no pun intended), points are easy to come by, install in a few minutes, and will always work if everything else is working.

Yeah, sure - the rubbing block wears, dwell-angle changes a litte, etc. But, many - if not most of these tractors are not being use 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. And, tractor engines run low RPMs when compared to cars. If your tractor gets run a few hours a week, or maybe 10 hours a week in the summer, and not at all in the winter- the points can hold their setting for years.
I drove a lot of cars and trucks with breaker-point ignition, and it was pretty easy to go 10,000 miles or more before even thinking about servicing the ignition. And, they were V-8s with more point movement. Also, auto engines tend to run higher RPMs, sometimes a lot higher - than tractors. With part-time use tractors, points wear has rarely been an issue with anything I have. Full-time use farm tractors are bit different. The #1 problem I have is points-oxidation when something sits in an unheated area all winter without being run. Very often, first start in the spring, I have to pop the magneto or distributor cap off, scrape the points clean, and it then runs fine all summer. I'm just thinking about stuff I've got on my property with points - I've got a 1969 Dodge Powerwagon hasn't had points put into it for 10 years - and I use it every summer for firewood. Oliver Cletrac HG with a magneto - which I put new points and condensor in 15 years ago, many gas farm tractors, including a Deere 1010 - and two Stihl chainsaws that have never yet had new points. Both date from the late 1970s. So, maybe I have exceptional luck - and maybe much of my stuff is "out of tune" a bit - but it all still works well. By the way, I also have a late 1970s Shihl O41 Super Electronic - which was a big deal when it came out (no points). It died a few years ago and I cannot get parts to fix it from Stihl. It was an odd-ball Bosch electronic setup that was discontinued.

By the way, since this all started with a 1010 - I'll mention it has a somewhat odd-ball igntion setup - but I assume you're aware of that. Original ignition resistor was built into the special ignition switch. Deere later made an update kit for it that came with a separate ballast resistor. The resistor-bypass is also built into the switch - instead of using the "R" bypass terminal on the starter-solenoid with the Delco starters. 1010 and 2010 need high spark energy for cold-starting and very often generic ignition coils don't work well. OEM Deere coil was the 6 volt coil orginally used in older 2 cylinder tractors. When hooked to 12 volts it works well in the 1010 - but used to burn up points pretty fast in the Prestolite distributors. Not much of a problem in the Delcos. When I first worked for Deere, 1010s were full time use farm tractors or bulldozers in the woods - and not collector's items yet.

[roofdog]

your advice is great help in my thinking for the ignition,guess i`ll get a couple extra points sets,my distributor is a wico anyway.