MTFCA Forum

I have a kingston coil box that looks like it had the large rubber switch instead of the smaller brass or rubber style switch, is it a 1909-10 box or a 1912 box? How do you tell the difference? I attached a photos of it. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

Looks like the one in my '12

It's not 1909, Bruce's black book or the online encyclopedia are good references for specific questions on year model changes.

It's very late '10 through '13. The basic box was identical from '09 through '13; what changed was the switch and the mounting brackets. The early box used a small round brass switch (the very earliest used a fiber switch) mounted rather low on the box, and the mounting brackets were the wraparound style. Very late in the '10 model year, either just before or right at the switch to the '11 models, the switch changed to the large round type on your box, and the brackets changed to the flat style that were either riveted to the box or secured with screws. You wouldn't want to try to make a later box look early by simply changing to the small switch; the left-hand hole for the common wire wouldn't be covered and would show.

Thank you very much for the info. So at the end of the day is this box acceptable for a 1910? Also I noticed that on some of the 1912 boxes that the Kingston tag is affixed to the lid rather than the box itself, maybe that is a difference between a 1912 vs. an earlier 1910-11 box?

Also in Bruce’s black book he did cover the earlier version of this box with the small switch, but did not explain the change to the large switch and when that actually happened

I don't believe that Kingston ever put their ID tags on the lid; always on the box above the switch as in your example. It was Splitdorf and Heinze (pre-T) that did that.

If your '10 is late enough in the model year, that box and switch could be correct, though I wouldn't swear to it. If you were to "make" an 09-10 box out of it, you'd have to install the brass switch, plugging the wire clearance hole on the driver's side, and install the wrap-around style brackets. The brackets would be no problem, only requiring the existing bracket holes in the engine side of the box to be plugged, and then drilling two new ones on each side for the new brackets' integral dowel pins.