If you’re a car guy, seeing a vintage magneto instantly ratchets a run-of-the-mill engine up a few notches. Just seeing one of those dark red Bakelite caps sticking up from the top of a motor makes you pause, even just for a second. The Dark Art of self-generating electrical power seems just a little more exotic than a brand-new MSD box or some other ignition system, right?
So, we found ourselves a righteous, vintage, intact Vertex mag for the hot rod and sent it out to the one and only Joe Hunt Magnetos in Rancho Cordova, CA – a suburb of Sacramento. Talked to the guy with the foreign accent at Hunt and he reassured us that they’d give it the once-over, change it from a locked-out situation to a mag that could take some advance and clean it up a little. We happily sent it over and waited.
Now, the motor we’re working on is a ‘53 Chrysler 331 Hemi and, as you can probably guess, we’re going for a sort of vintage-inspired-yet-newly-rompin’ style, but that Vertex mag was something we’d been searching for and finally finding one in such good shape was a real boon for us.
We finally got the mag back: no problems, it looked good and Joe Hunt’s reputation for being an expert magneto rebuilder/reconditioner was preserved…
BUT, the damn thing came back with some goofball, crap-tastic plate RIVETED to the case with a poorly executed typographical mess screen-printed on it.
Here’s a better shot of it from a buzz box they sell:
Bad news. Really bad news. If we wanted to advertise Joe Hunt on this car, we would’ve gladly done it had a bitchin’ vintage logo like this been used:
or maybe even this:
But what we really wanted was the unmistakable look of a vintage Vertex unit to complete the style of our motor, devoid of any logo clearly designed in the “Tap Out” age of graphic design. So, while we give Joe Hunt big ups for reconditioning our vintage magneto and standing behind their work (spendy, but hey – it’s a magneto, not some average ignition setup), we have to take away huge style points and we’re none too happy about being stuck with a logo plate permanently riveted into the case. Hey, Joe – if you’re gonna keep doing this, how ’bout just a sticker that we can remove if we want to? Or at least offer a discount for being forced to advertise your wares.
Overall, we’d recommend Joe Hunt for this kind of specialized work, but talk to them about that plate if this kind of thing is important to you.
You can visit Joe Hunt magnetos (here).
