How to change electronic ignition to points and condenser.
You don’t have to go back to the sixties to have a vehicle that will run after an EMP/CME. I’m going to talk about Chrysler products because that’s what I know the most of and I will use the 318cu.in (5.3L) to modify.
In 1974 Dodge went to electronic ignition, everything before was points and condenser. The earlier engines, the ones with points and condenser the V8 engine had a distributor that could only be put in correct or 180 deg out so if you were wrong all you had to do was take the distributor out and turn the rotor 180deg and replace it. Simple and that’s what I’m getting at. You can change a later year car to points and condenser by changing the distributor. In some cases you have to add a coil.
Once the distributor is in connect its wire to the coil then from the other connection on the coil a wire to a primary resistor and a second wire from the coil to the ignition switch on the start side. The resistor is in use only when the engine is running. A wire from the resistor to the run side of the ignition switch is next.
The wire from the ignition switch to the coil is used to give a full 12 volts during cranking and the resistor cuts the voltage down to somewhere around 9 volts to keep the points from burning out to soon.
The first thing to check is if the engine starts but cuts off when the ignition switch is released is the resistor. By pass the resistor and if it runs then the resistor is bad.
The resistor is not an absolutely necessity but if you don’t use one your points will burn out quicker. A cut out switch can be used in stead of an ignition switch by running a hot wire from the battery to the cut out switch and use the vehicles starter switch to operate the starter.
GMC and Ford are basically the same and anyone with ½ a brain could figure it out.
Now I’m guessing this will only work on engines with a mechanical fuel pump thinking a CME/EMP would take out the electric pump.

