Mk3 Cavalier Owners Club | Vauxhall Cavalier Dot Com

Just a quick one... would anyone happen to know of any good replacement coil that would have the DIN style connector as opposed to the M4 ones the Cavs usually have? I ask because things like dizzy caps tend to default to this style, and in order to make things easier in the long run, I'm looking at converting that side of things over.

(Anyone suggesting I've ordered a cap with such style connectors is blatantly lying, as I would NEVER do such a daft thing like that... honest?)

I'm going to change the leads out, so I might as well make the whole lot to the same standard. It's the one thing that never got changed on the 1.8, so maybe this whole mess is just a knackered cap and it'll sort it all out... (losing track of how many times I've said that now... )

Any help would be appreciated!

What exactly do you mean by DIN and M4 type connections? As far as I know the only two types of distributor caps there are for the 8 valvers are ones with gold colored pins in the HT lead terminals and ones without. Is that what you mean?

Yep - a mistake I once made.
I bought a cap for my C20NE with pins in...

I had to buy another without the pins because I had bought the wrong one in the first place.


Typical me - nice but dim.

Robsey wrote:Yep - a mistake I once made.
I bought a cap for my C20NE with pins in...

I had to buy another without the pins because I had bought the wrong one in the first place.


Typical me - nice but dim.

That's odd because both my old 8 valvers had pins in the distributor cap and so does Mike's c20ne.

I've just gone out to check this and to my surprise, all of my 8v Cavs have pins in the distributor.
I was sure at least one of them didn't but apparently not.

So that's 2 C20NEs, a 20NE and a C16NZ2.
To be fair though, the only one which still has it's original dizzy is the 20NE. So it's possible that they didn't originally.

I am 100% certain that I did not fit the distributor from the C18NZ to the C20NE when I did the conversion.

But I cannot say if Tony (Himselfunkown) had fitted the wrong one before selling the engine to me.
I just recall it working perfectly fine...

Come to think of it - I remember the parts man at my local factors saying that you could get either version on the C20NE.

I just take the original cap or a lead into the shop now...

(The incorrect cap purchase was an ebay sale).

Going back to the start of the thread, I'm not really sure how changing the types of connectors would help in any way, Mike, have you removed your distributor cap to check inside for wear? HT leads have the female pins in them anyway so the distributor cap should have male pins to connect to the leads, I'm not sure how having a cap without the pins in the terminals would help?

Ok, so for future reference... M4 is the pin type, DIN is the pinless type.

My dizzy cap is shot, when we had a look at the last meet it seemed that the internal electrodes were almost burnt away. I've tried getting dizzy caps in the past, and most of the time I end up with the DIN type, which is a pain to keep having to return each time. Hence why I'm looking to just shift the whole HV side to the DIN type plugs (Which I'm guessing are big banana plugs, given the pinless housings).

This would mean replacing the coil as well, because I've not seen any sets of leads that would convert from one to the other (unless I'm not looking hard enough, which is usually the case). And seeing as most cars these days seem to use this style, it just makes sense from a spares perspective.

Plus, I already bought the cap, and I'm not sending it back this time!