mercury distrib pick-up info

[weaselnot]

Mabe someone here could bring me up to date on Mercury's ignition system.
I was a master certified ase tec. for years (L1) and Senior product designer later on . I have worked with processor and non processor based systems. Many sensors/switches optical, magnetic, hall, ect... are used with the above systems. Most used and reliable of all are the powered magnetic type. When rotating an old (1974-up) electronic distributator you will feel magnetic detents throughout the rotation corosponding to the amount of cylinders. When you rotate a mercury distribuator there are close to 50+ detents, 3 windows, 6 lines. Has anyone ever scoped the return wire before. Dual signal mabe?? 90 small sign waves, 3 on and off

 

[weaselnot]

Re: mercury distrib pick-up info

Bad Weasel.!!! My stupidity glows at times, my previous train of thought is possible but unlikley on production anything in 1973. The seemingly smoothe detents i felt earlier were nothing but a failed bearing (hence the 50+ odd detents). The three straight edged windows is the compleete trigger. On this setup I have 3 leading edges and 3 trailing edges. This setup as many others will probily collapse the coil off of the trailing edge of the pick up. I WILL FIND OUT SOON FOR EVERYONE. $250 FOR A STINKING SWITCHBOX/MODULE/FISHING WEIGHT is just too much.

 

[Chris1956]

Re: mercury distrib pick-up info

Your question was not clear. However, how is this for a proximity answer?
The 70s' Merc distributor-based CDI igntions were Hall-effect triggers. The way I understand it they fired on the close of the window.

 

[Chris1956]

Re: mercury distrib pick-up info

Also the way I understand it, the CDI unit would pulse the ign coil at the proper time, with some fairly high voltage.