I'm moving the Allison XR-700 (Crane) electronic ignition from my 69 1800 to my 72 F.I. 1800. It's hooked up right (I have the original directions) but it doesn't work. There is an extra wire - the white wire that goes through the firewall with the red ignition wire. Where does it go?

I have a 69 - 2ltr carb model and am thinking about a conversion to elec. ignition.

I have had good results with other cars but have been informed that because the coil and distrib. provide a pretty strong spark that the advantage of elec.ignition on the 1800s would be negligable.

Does anyone have any thoughts or experince with this?

You gain a little reliability by getting rid of the points with their little wear block sliding over the 4 lobed cam in the distributor. As soon as you set the point gap and timing, that starts wearing and decreasing the gap and changing the timing. With an optical sensor you set it once, and if you check it again 10K miles later it is still in the same place.

Somehwere along the line between a bone stock B18 and the pepped up 2.2 liter motor I have now the stock ignition system fell behind, and I started to get a sort of wavering weak feeling to the motor at full throttle and higher rpms. I would have sworn it was a fuel supply issue, but it was completely solved with the installation of an Allison (now Crane) optical ignition system and a more powerful coil. Now it pulls clean, crisp, and hard up to 7000 rpm (as fast as I want to spin the stock bottom end).
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I'm JohnMc, and I approved this message.

The white wires are to and from the tach, and the tach on an 1800 goes in series with the coil circuit, not in parallel.

Hook the white wire that used to go to the coil (-) back onto it. Hook the wire Crane says goes to the coil (-) to the "spare" white wire, that used to go to the points and condensor.

Originally there were only two wires attached to the coil. The red ignition wire to the positive and a black wire to the negative, which went through a capacitor to ground. Now there are two red wires attached to positive, one of which is the Allison wire. There are now two black wires attached to the negative, one of which is the Allison wire, and the white wire, which used to go to the condensor, has nowhere to go. And, of course, it won't start.

I finally got the system to work by running a wire from the ignition switch to the positive side of the coil. Now the car runs great but the tachometer doesn’t work. There are two extra wires now, the white wire which used to go to the condenser and the red wire which used to go to the positive side of the coil. How do I get the tach to work?

Take the wire that runs from the crane unit to the distributor and connect it to the red wire (goes to the tach). Connect the white wire (from the tach)and connect it back to the distributor. Now your tach will work.

Rolfe--71E

I just check mine----
purple is ground
Red is + on the coil
black is - on the coil
then there is the gray harness with a few wires in it that goes to the dist. thats all I have on my unit,if this dosn't help go to their web site for directions,if you changed the whole dist. no problem but if you changed dist. you may have to re index your plug wires

Mmmmmm, that's interesting. The only white wire I see on mine is the one that is bundled with the black and gray and goes together with them from the control box to the light gizmo inside the distributor. Maybe yours is an older version that had different wiring? Sorry, I guess I'm not helping you much. :-(
Bob S.