Technically, distributor cars *could* do this mod. You'd need to change the distributor to the "low" side of the ignition system, and use it to fire the coils, but that's technically allowed since "Internal distributor components and distributor cap may be substituted."
Nope. Some ITAC members have, on this board, said that in their personal opinions, "distributed" means high tension spark plug wires.
Case in point: Hondas have a distributor system, with the Hall Effect sensor, coil, and ignitor all inside the distributor housing, with regular ole rotor, cap, and spark plug wires to standard plugs. They tend to over heat and fail these internal ignitors and coils so some in IT would like to go to a CoP.
Hondata, a manufacturer of an IT-compliant aftermarket ECU system, offers a CoP module that interfaces with their ECU and allows use of Honda OEM CoPs. The module uses the stock distributor innards for timing, but ignores the coil and ignitor. It then adds a wiring harness from the distributor to the CoP module and from the module plugs into these OEM CoPs to fire the coils.
This would, in effect, allow the Hondas to do
EXACTLY as you are suggesting above that the Miatas can do: use a cam-driven device as the engine position sensor, install CoPs on the plugs, and use a CoP module to fire them.
However, the ITAC members have declared this is non-compliant (in their opinion), because while the distributor is still there, it is no longer "distributing" the spark as is required by the regs, since all the (automotive-term) distributor is doing now is acting as a timing device to the ECU (same as Miata). Others have suggested that you could wire the Honda such that the wires going to the CoPs come out of the distributor, but the response was that no, that's not compliant because that would be distributing a
signal to fire the CoPs, not delivering the actual
"spark".
Thus, according to them, it can never be compliant to install a CoP system on any car that has a distributor, because the spark is no longer being "distributed" by that distributor.
I'll not bother to be accused again of tempting others into STL (where we can already do this, har-de-har), but IT should change the rule to let everyone install CoP if desired. That's another one of those 1985 washer bottle regs that no longer apply to today's technologies.
Out.
GA