Distributor? Electrical Advance or Mechanical

[AnthonyR23]

Hey, I was reading through some of the posts and saw someones post regarding the car dying once it got hot, and people seem to be pointing out the distributor as a possible problem. I was just browsing through msd distributors and noticed almost for the same price some are mechanical and others are electrical, but both seem to come up under 1989 mustang gt. Just wondering if someone could fill me in on what the difference is, and opinions on if one would be better than the other! Thanks guys!

 

[BlownFiveLiter]

It's intriguing that it would list both for an EFI application, unless it has them for those who have performed carb swaps. EFI Mustangs use electrical advance, and it's far beneficial to do so over both vacuum and mechanical advance distributors because you can control your spark advance much more precisely and under a wide range of conditions. IAT reading high temps = EEC pulling spark. IAT reading a nice cool charge = EEC advancing spark. Can't do that with a mechanical or vacuum advance distributor.

 

[AnthonyR23]

Thanks! Ya it just threw me off, seeing both mechanical and electrical listed after filtering the search on summit racing for 88 Mustang GT distributors. Thanks again!!

 

[HotFox]

As previously stated I would bet that they are listing the mechanical for carb swaps. I got a carb swapped 92 with a mechanical distributor locked out with a MSD 6AL programmable where it has timing curved based on RPM that is programmed with a laptop.
If you have functional computer it is much better as it is using many outputs to decide the best timing at that moment.

Scott