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Just curious why did early 30s Packard have dual ignition coils was it an example of having a "fail safe" ignition system?

1933 and 1934 were years of a lot of changes to the Packard Eight and Super Eight, the angled block for larger ports, downdraft carburetion, full-flow oil filter and oil cooler for 1934, finned rod bearing caps, etc. Both the Eights and Super Eights in 1933 and 34 used the Northeast dual coil equipment which worked like this. The distributor had but a 4-lobed cam, with dual points spaced to open at 90 deg. apart. Each point set had it's own condenser and coil, and the rotor was double-ended with each end serviced by one of the sets of points and coil. Thus what you had was two entirely separate 4-cylinder ignition systems. Firing alternated between the two rotor ends, first one, then the other - thus the spark plug wire order around the cap is NOT the same as the engine firing order. So in a sense it was fail-safe but probably not the way you might think. If one set of points, condenser or coil failed, you still had 4 functioning cylinders but with the extra load of having to turn the 4 dead cylinders you might limp home if you didn't have to climb a hill or jump a curb.

The advantage, whether realized or not, was that you had a dwell angle of what a 4-cylinder car would have, 40+ degrees of dwell, thus more time for coil saturation which Packard might have thought was important for higher speeds. The dual coil system was gone for the 1935 Eights and Super Eights, probably because they found the extra cost didn't result in enough (or any?) improvement in overall performance. Though I'll note that the system on my 34 produces one heck of a healthy, fat blue spark.

As to the Twelves and V16s of the better makers, Packard, Pierce, Rolls-Royce, Marmon, Cadillac, perhaps the earlier Lincoln V12 like the KB series, etc., I believe they all used dual coils and in some cases even had dual distributors, one for each bank; if I'm wrong on this someone please correct me. On the Packard Twelve the system performed similarly to the Eights; you had a 6-lobed distributor cam, dual points, double-ended rotor, each fed by a coil and point set and thus two separate and distinct 6-cylinder ignition systems. If a V12 or V16 would have had a single point set and coil and a 12 or 16-lobed distributor cam, I'm assuming the dwell would have been so short as to affect high speed performance and thus the Twelve kept this dual coil system right to the end, as (I believe) Pierce, Rolls, and others did.

M

Owen Dyneto will be along shortly to chine in, I'm sure. He has a '34 1100 with dual coils. They alternate in firing, there are two sets of points. The dwell is longer which gives a nice fat spark. The car almost always starts on less than one revolution of the engine, even after sitting all winter.

The pre '35 cars are full of elegant technical features like this, they became a casualty of cost cutting

Regards

John Harley

Hi John, it looks like we were responding almost simultaneously but I beat you by 3 seconds.

Another elegant little feature of 33 and 34 that went by the boards in 1935 was the "Brake Selector" control on the dashboard that allowed you to select from 1 of 4 different levels of boost for the power brakes. Another was the triple-filament headlamp bulbs.

One theoretical advantage of the Northeast system was to double the breaker point life. Each set is running at one fourth motor speed versus one half for a single set.

Some of this experimentation may have resulted as a response to Henry Ford's system in the V-8 which was unique and extended point life up to 60,000 miles in some cases.

Another possibility is that Packard was running into high speed drivability issues resulting from poor grounding due to the distributor tower.

On the twelve dual ignition was a necessity and maybe they were just dressing up the Eights with twin coils.

The brake selector was probably dropped because its use as a sales point was ineffective. The ones I got working functioned mostly as a curiosity. When the system is working properly the wheels can go into lock up at 55 mph and so less power assist is desirable for an expert driver on icy roads. But how many people are going to understand something like that? After all the brake selector in the Duesenberg contributed to Fred Duesenberg being killed in one of his vehicles.

Today we have stupid government mandates for anti-lock brakes and traction control which results in people speeding past me at 65 mph on the motorways and then crashing because they assume these gadgets will handle everything. Every day for the past week I have witnessed an accident because of road conditions. I can feel my car sliding on glare ice and traction control is useless. You have to know how to drive to keep the car on course.

"Today we have stupid government mandates for anti-lock brakes and traction control which results in people speeding past me at 65 mph on the motorways and then crashing because they assume these gadgets will handle everything. Every day for the past week I have witnessed an accident because of road conditions. I can feel my car sliding on glare ice and traction control is useless. You have to know how to drive to keep the car on course."

I think most people believe these systems work better. In fact, a car with anti lock brakes will not stop as short as one without. This nearly caused me to crash once before I figured it out.

Same with 4 wheel drive. SUV drivers barrel along without a care in the world, confident in their 4 wheel drive wonder machine, not realizing that 4 wheel drive means you can accelerate better on bad roads but your braking and cornering power is no better, and may be worse than an ordinary car. This is why you see so many of them in the ditch this time of year.