When a Pertronix goes bad what does the motor do?

I've searched the archives and can only come up with is, "it ran badly so I put the points back in". I'd like to know exactly what the motor did.

When at idle and thru the RPM range my motor still has a pop back thru the exhaust. The 57' 365 Caddy is a new rebuild with a fresh valve job, new plugs, wires, cap, rotor and new pertronix ignition and coil. No ballast resistor. There is no road miles on the motor just a freshly fired motor with an annoyng pop thru he exhaust. The timing IS right on also.

Any help is appreciated.

 

When my pertronix went bad the engine refused to fire. I screwed it up by using a coil with too little resistance. They still waranteed it, even though I admitted it was my fault. They told me I had to promise to get the correct coil.

Dave

 

A small leak at the exhaust manifold will make em pop sometimes. Don't know if this is the case but its just a thought.

 

When they fail they fail, no spark. Sounds like you may have a bad plug or wire.

Or worse case. a bad valve.

 

Agreed...when the Pertronix goes bad your car sits on the side of the road or on the back of a flatbed trailer.

Check for a manifold leak...

 

Also check for a bad plug... Ive seen some cracked before... It aint the Petronix if its just the one hole

 

Is your reluctor air gap even all the way round? That will affect the performance. As said before, when they quit they give no spark at all.

Flatman

 

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Later today when I get a chance to work on it I'll try a new set of plugs and wires. First I'll pull 1 wire at a time to see which cylinder is the culprit. Why didn't I think of this yesterday? I'm 100% sure that the valves are are seating because watched the guy do the valve job myself and he does know what he's doing. As far as an exhaust leak, I'm running open lake pipes at the moment and no fenders and hood there's no indication of the exhaust leaking.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll bring an update later this evening on my findings.

 

do a compression test while you have the plugs out, you never know,

did you break in the came correctly? with the oils today not having the zinc in them theres been many problems with cams going bad very fast because there wasnt enough good cam lube on the cam for break in, im sure you did this correctly but you never know, sometimes a backfire can be contributed to a bad cam lobe

good luck, i hope its something easy.

JEFF

 

is it an ignitor or ignitor II? the ignitor II needs a .6 ohm coil while the standard Ignitor works with any regular 1.5 ohm coil like standard MSD or ACCEL or pertronix flamethrower. The flamethrower II coil is needed with a ignitor II and it will cause a slight detonation(could be the pop) problem through the rpm range or cause the unit to go bad completley if mixed. That is the problem with the pertronix stuff try a crane XRi using it in mine for 2 years now and has an adjustable rev limiter built in that you can adjust through the caps inspection window!

 

Kirk, I am more than a little interested in what you find is causing this problem as I have the exact problem with my just finished '63 Dodge which has a mildly-built 440". I've checked the wires, changed the plugs, changed the cap and otherwise fidled with this thing until my precious few hairs are giving up the ship! The problem is consistantly inconsistant as the popping through the exhaust comes and goes. Sometimes it is really nasty while other times the popping goes away. A friend, while trying to scrutinize the problem, pulled individual wires from the cap and then held the plug wire contact close to the cap contact, but not in engagement. A pretty good spark would jump from ther cap to the plug and the popping would then calm down. He though that as the engine was new and really had not been run that the plugs were fouling and that was why the popping out the exhaust. What he did by holding the spark plug wire away from the cap was create a very hot spark to the plug, which in turn cleaned the fouled plug. It seemed to work at the time, but I'm not so sure now that the real culprit has been found.

Soooooo, I'm very interested to hear what you may find. Right now, I'm thinking of going back to a set of points, or a true electronic distributor, just to see if that helps.

 

When ***embling the motor I used the original factory cam but used new lifters. I let the lifters set in an oi bath overnight also. I put a LARGE amount of "white" ***embly lube on the face of each lifter and also on the cam lobes. Upon initial start up I ran it at about 2000 RPM. Of course I still wouldn't rule this out. Before having a valve job done I ran a compression test and it had between 125-130# of pressure in all cylinders. I will be runnin another compression test again but would imagine it would be the same if not better.

Thank you all for the suggestions and I'll keep you updated as I go.

 

I forgot to add that the Pertronix I'm running is the original Ignitor version. I purchased the Pertromix coil at the same time also.

 

You didn't say if putting the points back fixed it

 

Q: "When a Pertronix goes bad what does the motor do? "

A: It laughs until it cries, then it dies...then it dies!

Seriously...a bad Pertronix just shuts the motor off until you put points back in it!

 

just as fat hach said, it dosen't do anything

 

just went through the same **** with mine .It ran fine, then got a little weird so I figured with 3 year old plugs it was probably due. Changed plugs and lost number 8. Fixed it and lost number 4. Fixed it or so I thought and then it wouldn't even fire. Mine is the pertronix kit for the old points stlye dizzy so I started backtracking everything til it came up to the coil. Around here you don't just find one for that system so I picked up an Accel with 1.4 ohm primary and it started after 1 turn. Not sure if it will be ok or not but I don't think the 1/10th ohm differance will hurt. If I'm wrong I'm screwed but I won't buy another one

 

I am a former Pertronix guy with my Olds Cutl***. (I had the Ignitor and the Flamethrower coil, and used the Pertronix specs for slightly recurving the distributor). I never had my car outright die. My main problem was constant detonation. Maybe it had something to do with the stock High Compression motor. I couldn't maintain a tuned engine on the 330 for more than a couple of weeks before it was fouling plugs and running like ****. The timing was set dead on, and my friend and I retarded it, set it forward to no avail. More than half throttle would sound like a popcorn kettle going off. We worked on this for months and months on in over the course of countless weekends. I went through 2 sets of plug wires over the course of 2 years trying to solve the problem, changed plugs (tried lots of different styles...hotter spark...colder spark) more than six times and never got rid of the detonation. I finally sort of gave up and lived with it for quite a while until I finally took the Olds over to my old school cl***ic car mechanic Rick (sadly, he's now p***ed away). He convinced me to pull all the Pertronix stuff. I felt guilty and stupid. But much to my amazement, genuine GM points and recurving the distributor back to stock made the engine purr once again. 3 years later, I'm still in tune and haven't changed the points yet. (Just one set of plugs) Go figure. It's definitely interesting to see how others have faired with this. I always wanted the Pertronix to work as I had always heard great things about their systems. But it just never worked on my Olds, as hard as I tried.

 

I couldn't believe how much the car changed after installing the kit and the flamethrower. Started after only turning over once and didn't change. Ran stronger, helped mpg and it didn't seem to matter how far I advanced the dizzy, it still didn't detonate. I took it all the way to highest idle and it didn't matter but I did back it down a little for hot starts. Thought it was the hot setup til it ( the coil) died in my driveway. I'll give it another shot cause the differance between the Pertronix and stock HEI to me is amazing. Even with a sbc smog engine and running 2 edelbrock carbs on a tunnelram the plugs came out burning clean and even alittle on the lean side

 

I wish I could have said the same. But I probably won't go back to Pertronix, at least not with the High Compression 330 in the Olds currently. Perhaps the 10.25 to 1 stock compression did not jive well with their higher output system. I never could sort it out, but it would run decent for about a week or two at a time, then drop completely out of tune. Fouled plugs, etc. Good luck getting the coil figured out. Ironically, during the time I was having problems, I never had the Flamethrower coil fail on me.

 

My Pertronix setup was SBC in a vintage road race car. It worked fine a couple of seasons, then for some reason I must have had the ignition on without starting the engine. After that it would start with some difficulty, run strong for about 6 seconds and quit cold. A few minutes later it would start again for about 6 seconds then quit.

I use a 62 Corvette distributor with both the fuelie drive and tach drive. I wanted to keep that setup but use new innards. I decided to go MSD as the rest of my ignition was MSD based(6AL and Blaster 2 coil). They sold me their pickup/reluctor and with a little modification, set it up inside the 62' Fuelie distributor.

Now runs like a champ. MSD says not to worry about ignition on without starting the engine but I'm not going to test that.

 

The one thing you need to consider when you decide you're going to depend on any aftermarket ignition system is this: If you ever break down will you be able to get replacement parts for it out on the road somewhere, or even at your own local auto parts store?

I've been running points distributors on all of my old rides. If you happen to be running one of the GM points distributors built from '57 -'74 you really have it good as there's really no distributor out there that's easier to set the points on.

I either just run a stock coil with a recurved stock single-point dizzy, or run an MSD6A along with a better coil while running my stock points distributor. If the MSD unit ever fails you just take the two jumper wires they supply with them and jump the MSD unit out of the circuit and you're on your way.

There just isn't a lot of maintenance that needs to be done to keep the points happy. A spare set of points and condensor is cheap and compact enough to keep in the glovebox if you ever need them.

A points ignition is one of the reasons I like old cars, simple and reliable.

I once heard that cell phones were invented so that you could call a tow truck when your electronic ignition fails.

 

Kirk, I don't know enough about your motor and the ignitor version you have installed.
But swapping back to points should be simple and would tell you quickly where you're at.


About pertronix...
No doubt in my mind, that engineers would have used the reliable and simple hall effect magnetic switch vs. mechanical points, if available back in the days.
Igniter I is a simple on/off switch with dwell, just like points are.
No delicate hyper-sensitive hi-tech electronics involved.
The lamps in my dash require more maintenance...

I have the Pertronix Igniter I and flamethrower coil with solid copper wires and resistor plugs with increased .010 gap on both my rides.
Used that setup daily on freeways and city driving for more than 6 years now.
Freezing mornings and driving for hours at desert temperatures alike without problems.
Always got a spare set of points in the glovebox but never needed it. Swap would take about 5 minutes.

Unless I read about Pertronix somewhere I don't even remember I installed it years ago.
I like the fatter, hotter spark, leaner burn and better mileage and performance I get, let alone the zero-maintenance aspect and keeping the original distributor.

The Hall effect principle was first discovered by Edwin Hall in 1879 !!
Took a while longer before hall effect sensors could be cheaply produced and fit inside a distributor.
But the basic technology is rather traditional and has been reliable since its inception.

 

I've got NOS GM points in my dizzy and it's quite happy now. I agree 100%. But it's true that the dang cell phone definitely instills confidence while out on road trips. I've done my fair share of flat-bedding, but never for ignition.

BTW, I like the look of your GTO. Black powder coated steelies too!

 

I am up and running!!! The was so simple that I am almost ashamed to share.
I took out the R45s plugs and replaced them with 45 plugs and not a problem. When taking out the old plugs they were real sooty black but there was no black smoke out of the exhaust meaning that all the fuel wasn't getting burnt. I'm running new "old time" cloth covered wires and I don't think the wires could carry the juice of the Pertronix and fire a resistor plug sufficiently. Nomore miss and the exhaust is not talking back anymore.

 

Read the new plugs again after a while.
The resistor on a R45 is only 3K and even with suppressor wires (another 3K or more) the coil can easily overcome that little resistance to fire a spark.
The ignitor only switches the coil primary on and off, same as points.
Takes more than 10K resistance for a coil to start having problems delivering a good spark.

Maybe the s-suffix of your old plug, meaning 'extended tip' was reaching too deep into the chamber.
Some head designs, like my early inline 6, are alright with the extended tip plugs, but other later ones may not burn all the gas. Just guessing.

Also experiment with the spark gap.
With the 40KV flamethrower coil you can widen a standard .035 gap up to .045
That coil has outperformed all other quality brand high voltage coils on the market in a test measuring current and output.

 

Thanks for the helpfull tips Roadrunner. You've got me curious as to what the plugs will look like after some mileage. I bet that you are correct on them being a non-extending tip that it helps it fire more efficiently with the head design.

 

I have a Pertronix Ignitor in my 1957 Olds 88 along with an MSD coil and MSD 6A. The Pertonix and coil have been in for about 8 years with no problems. The MSD 6A has been in for about 12 years and zero problems. I am not a fan of points so going to the Pertronix was a good choice for me.

I have heard from another Olds owner that he had a Pertronix Ignitor fail on him and he had to get a replacement. He nows always carries a spare. I guess I should too, but not having any problems in all these years I just haven't gotten around to it.

 

"and recurving the distributor back to stock made the engine purr once again." thechoop - most likely that's why your detonation went away, nothing to do with the PerTronix or points - it's the curve!

Kirk Hanning - PerTronix reccomends that you should be running the ballest resistor or resistor wire (if that's what it came with), but as long as it's not seeing over 12 volts and you have a 1.5ohm coil, you will probably be fine.

 

They are also very sensative to rust on the pick up. A little emory cloth on them can do wonders.