The Ignition Job

Some of you will be aware of my car (A58O THW) Tickford Capri No 19 and its history, from articles printed in the Capri Club and Ford Heritage magazines. For the benefit of the rest I will give a quick rundown. I purchased the car in April 1993 after it had been stolen and recovered several months earlier, with the added problem of all the remaining mechanicals also stripped from the shell but were included in the purchase. The next two years were spent on rebuilding this car to its former glory, and quite successfully apart from one thing, the ignition system.

As we all know our Capris do not use a standard Ford set up and some of you have also had some problems. The Tickford system consists of an A.F.T German made computer ignition box, situated in most cases behind the centre console and uses an electronic pick up sensor, which locates in the gearbox bellhousing. This sensor reads the engine timing from a metallic pickup attached to the flywheel. Coupled with this is a second smaller box located behind the glove compartment, which controls the extra fuel required while the car is on boost. This system uses a separate wire loom which tacks on to the original Ford looming in the engine bay which then makes the standard 2.8 injection ignition connections redundant.

Getting back to my car, the original looming had been completely butchered and was in several pieces stashed in two carrier bags. Not knowing what was Ford wiring and which was the Tickford, I enlisted the assistance of the very helpful and knowledgeable Shawn Hickman (Capri No.8). Who kindly separated off the Tickford looming for me, also repairing some damaged parts and informed me of what exactly goes where on refitting.

The results were not what I had hoped, the engine was happy to run on the original Ford ignition box, but would not fire up on the Tickford system. Something was quite wrong, because the more I turned it over the hotter the looming got. Infact at one point it started to smoke. This situation left me in the position to run the car, but be very careful not to go on boost, as I could easily have damaged the engine. The desire to change to say Micro Dynamics or Turbo Technics systems was great, but I knew if I did that the original system would never have been sorted out, which is not what I wanted. This annoying problem got left and put off until Ford Fair 97, attending the show with our then named Tickford Owners Club. Explaining my problem to another Tickford Capri owner, Brian Hollins (No 30) who said he would be happy to have a look at my car. Brian explained that he was an ex Aston Martin Mechanic and had previously done work on several Tickford Capris. Well that was good enough for me and a couple of weeks later I was on my way round the M25 to Weybridge in Surrey for a visit. The usual traffic congestion problems delayed me considerably giving Brian less time than he really needed to get to the bottom of the fault, but did at least get to try out my computer box in his car to find that it works fine. I did have every intention of returning to Brian at a later date, but due to financial problems due mainly to my wife losing her job left me with no option but to put the car in storage.

Earlier this year Brian contacted me expressing an interest in making exact copy replacement Ignition looms for the Capris, this finally resulted in me removing my own loom for Brian to test for a possible fault and subsequently copy. A fault was found, but still made no difference once refitted. Well that was enough for me, I was all set to invest in an alternative set up, when Brian offered to visit me and have one last go. I accepted his offer but made it quite clear that he may be wasting his time, as by this time I firmly believed that the metallic pickup on the flywheel must be missing. An undeterred Brian still turned up to meet the challenge. He spent about three hours going over all the electrical system, only to find no faults what so ever. He then suggested a change of flywheel sensor lead, which still made no difference, then Brian changed the coil for a new item, which was one of the things that he had not been happy about when I had first taken the car to him. Incredibly it worked and the car burst into life for the first time on its proper ignition system. Why a new coil should make all the difference, when the old one seemed to be working fine I don't know. All I can do is to thank Brian for being so persistent and determined to get to the root of this problem and of course I would recommend him to any one who may have a problem develop with their car.

Shaun Skinner