i noticed at a show the other week a crossflow 1600 that had been modified to electronic ignition.
something to do with the engine curve being very similar to another ford engine.

has anyone seen this before?

if so is there a set method of doing the mod.

Nothing new about fitting electronic ignition to a X-Flow. Did it in the early 1980's using a Lumenition kit. Totally reliable whilst I had the car.

Move onto the early 90's and I fitted a Lucas kit to the X-Flow in my first Caterham. Supposed to be better than Lumenition but in truth the combined rotor arm/chopper needed shooting at birth, needed a new one every 6 months when you used high revs regularly.

Thus when I built my second Caterham I fitted a Lumenition again. Never needed touching for the 10 years it was in the car. As far as I am aware its still in a Formula Ford ooop North.

So rather than buggering about fitting used parts of unknown quality stick with what you have and simply add a Lumenition kit.

Or if you have loads of cash change to 3D ignition. It makes a huge difference to part throttle performance and economy but it takes time to get it fitted a running unless you buy a costly bespoke kit.

It has a lumenition fitted.

What I'd seen was a setup that did without the distributor completely by the look of it......

it was probably the ford ESC module from a 90's fiesta or escort, most likely with an 'HCS' engine

the HCS engine is development of the Valencia, which in turn was a development of the Xflow - so it should be pretty similar
(the last version of this line of engines was the 1.3 endura E which went in the KA's)



the ESC module looks a bit like the EDIS4 module that gets used with lots of aftermarket ECU's, but it has a vacuum line connected to it - also its a stand alone controller, but not programmable

its needs to be connected to a crank sensor (VR sensor) reading off a 36-1 tooth wheel and a 4cyl coil pack
then you can make a blanking plug for where the dizzy used to go


ESC's are cheap and very popular with grasstrack and banger racers so aren't always that easy to find in the scrapyards these days...


here's a bit more info:
http://www.xrtwo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=64009

[Edited on 25/9/2014 by mcerd1]