Winter Project: Late 1912/13 Heinze Coil Box & Coil Rebuild

[Darren J Wallace]

After working on my original Heinze coil box and coils all winter, everything was installed today. Car started right up and runs great! I rebuilt 7 of these late 1912, early 1913 coils during the winter, and NONE of them have any issues or double sparking! They all have new windings, points, and capacitors. All of them set up beautifully on a Strobo-Spark tester with an adapter I made to cater to the Heinze coils. My car is a 4 generation family owned early Canadian Touring sold new in Tavistock, Ontario, Canada, about 10 miles from where I live now.

I decided to do as little to the coil box itself as possible cosmetically. I just upgraded/cleaned and protected the original finish which was still pretty good. Making sure all the wiring is good and all the contacts clean. My car isn't a show car, nor will it ever be in my lifetime. Keeping as much of the car unchanged but correct as possible is fun for me. I guess time will tell how long the coils will stand up. I see no reason why they wouldn't last another lifetime. With a spare '13 steel coil box under the back seat with 4 rebuilt coils in it, I'll never need it and the Heinze unit will probably keep me going down the road reliably! This has been a fun and very rewarding project!

[Scott_Conger]

Very nice Darren, and neat history on the car.

My '13 is a 1/2/13 car which SHOULD have that setup but regretably, does not.

[Les Schubert]

As I have a 13 Canadian T with a Heinz cool box, I find your posting quite interesting.
20 years ago I rebuilt my Heinz coils but was not very happy with them. I then built a set of coils using conventional points. I also got a Trufire for a Heinz box.
Of course today’s coil tuning equipment didn’t exist

[Duey_C]

Notes from the peanut gallery:
Darren, I think it's fantastic there's a new light cast on the Heinze coil set-up!
Thank you!

[R.V.Anderson]

Nice job, Darren. Actually, FWIW, your coils are strictly late '12. By the end of the '12 model year, Heinze had changed to a one piece armature, which carried over into very early '14 before Heinze completely changed the size, style, and contact locations of their coils to fit the standard metal coilbox.

[Darren J Wallace]

Thanks guys for your kind words! My car is a September/October Canadian 1912 build. It has a mostly 1912 chassis, with a 1913 body on it. The lights, running boards, speedometer setup, engine (B 872) and many other little things are 1912. That's why I chose this coil box and coils to put on the car. My 3 spares are the 1913 one piece armatures with the big letter "K" on them. The ones in the car all have letters "I" or "I 1/2". I felt this was close enough for my liking, and who knows what could have been there originally. All an educated guess on my part It seemed to make sense "historically" that some spare coils should be slightly newer. Who knows.....This is all just fun and VERY rewarding! I appreciate the fact that my thread is showing some interest, and am glad to share. I really appreciate all the wealth of knowledge that RV Anderson has been with this project. Big thank you to RV!!

What I found when setting them up was firstly, I had to bend the lower point assembly a little bit back and forth to get the amp draw on the coil to be within the restrictions of the brass knurled knob adjuster. Sort of a "coarse" adjustment. The 1913 coil's knurled knob assembly are a riveted assembly which prevents people without a small machine shop from taking them apart The 1912's can be unscrewed completely.
I used a setting of 1 amp on the strobo-spark coil tester. This seems to be the sweetest spot to set them at WHEN you are using regular off-the-shelf windings and not the original styles like RV Anderson provides. I'm not sure just why, but it seems to work. I had more trouble getting rid of double sparking when I tried to set them to 1.3 amps. I also had to make additional spacers on my lathe to go under the upper point assembly to accommodate the fact that the same points used on the regular Ford coil points are used on the new Heinze points sets, so the higher clearance is required. The air gap under the lower points seems to be best using the top plate as the reference to measure from. My primary cores are as close to flush as possible with the coil's top metal plate from studying the originals carefully before I gutted them. Roughly my air gap seems to work out to about 0.015 - 0.020". When setting them up I did initially get some minor double sparking, but I found that using a very fine set of smooth needle nose pliers, I could very slightly raise or lower the top point assembly with a teeny tiny amount of bending, and that got rid of the double sparking! I could get nice fat sparks consistently, and checking the coils later on, the setting stays stable.
I see no reason moving forward why these coils wouldn't work trouble free for years and years. I guess time will tell and I will gladly report back here as time goes on.

[TWrenn]

I have Heinz coils on my mid-year '13 and I love them. They're quiet for one thing, and even tho you seldom see them, I like the way they look.
I think they get a bad rap just like Pitt Bulls. They seem to be as reliable as the K/W's. My 2 cents.

[Darren J Wallace]

Just couldn't wait.......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE1peIT1U8I

[Scott_Conger]

Darren

that sure sounds nice!

[Bob McDaniel]

Nice Job!!