A few details and pictures of old school Holden L34 Torana V8 dual coil distributor we’ve just resurrected. Back in the day, Holden commissioned REPCO (when it was still an engineering company…) to modify a small volume of standard common or garden variety BOSCH Holden V8 8 lobe points cam/single point distributors to an alternate and elegant dual-circuit configuration using two completely electrically independent contact set/condenser/coil circuits. Another US-based company was commissioned to produce the special dual king post cap and companion dual circuit rotor required. This design results in each individual circuit serving only 4 engine cylinders (with the distributor firing order alternating between circuits) so that the dwell behaviour of each circuit is akin to typical 4 cylinder engine dwell levels. This provides superior coil saturation behaviour and de-facto optimised spark intensity at elevated RPM levels. Many of these distributors suffered from rotor to cap interference issues and it is very common for the rotor centre snout to be damaged/cracked/compromised as a result. As the special dual king post cap is NLA, we manufactured a new cap by bonding in a second king post after machining a second post as required from a donor cap. We repaired the damaged rotor by manufacturing a new centre snout from phenolic resin stock and bonding it it place with high temperature aerospace grade epoxy. We also repaired the rotor shank by machining an aluminium support sleeve and epoxying it in place to bolster the rotor’s points cam attach shank hoop strength. With careful final assembly and detail checks and fitting iterations, we ensured a quality rotor to cap fit and interface. The L34 distributor also requires some key specific additional on-going in-service maintenance to ensure reliable performance, but that’s another story…

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