For what it's worth I have been running my Pertronix Ignitor II system with an old Delco 32A generator for almost two decades. I will say that I have one dedicated ground straight back to my battery for my distributor, generator, and voltage regulator.
Any one in the porcelain body will do ( GM 55-up). I kept the stock one for my 56 Ford conversion because it had a nice heat sink and air vent. Keeping the resistor just lowers the voltage and definitely helps with the cooler coil.
I had an old shop teacher that liked to say that there will always be folks out there that could break an anvil with a rubber hammer. It certainly does make me wonder every time I hear of someone having multiple failures of the same part....
My best guess is that I drive the cars, they aren't grocery getters for me, they are hot rods that turn 6200 rpm thru the gears on more than one occasion or once a year. They may have been fine on the GTO if I always shifted the Trans at 2200 rpm and kept my eyes on the gas gauge instead of a tach. I would bet there would be more complaints if guys actually ran their hot rods thru the gears more often. Infact most of the race forums I've visited don't run pertronix on their race cars, must be a reason, yet points are still out there with motors turning 6200. Again a few forums I have visited mentioned the very thing I had problems with, high rpm cutout and missing.... They may have been a decent product 10 yrs ago or so but in the last 5 yrs I have yet to find 1 person in real life that could get 1 to pull over 5000 without some ignition problem... ...
I am down the road from Sonoma Raceway (aka: Sears Point), and up from Weathertech Raceway (aka: Laguna Seca). I have not seen or heard of anyone running points on a drag car in about two-decades. There's a whole mess of dirt tracks out this way, too. No points there, either. None with the drift guys. Except for restored vintage cl*** racers, none on the road courses, either. Maybe things are different where you are, but I am watching people turn 8,500-9,000+ rpm, all-electronic, all the solid-state time. The last time I heard of anyone with an ignition failure leading to a lost race, it was points that failed. None of this came from discussions on a forum. It all came from direct experience on the tracks. And yes, a whole mess of them are running Pertronix units. I know, because I installed them.
I’ll look tomorrow. I’m thinking it’s just a plain old ceramic one. He did specify the blue Bosch coil.
I use both Pertronix and MSD stuff for the most part. I can only speak about my personal experience but Iv'e had more problems with MSD than Iv'e ever had with a Pertronix module.
The dizzie in my 57 y-block is converted to Pertronix. So I bought a 3 to power a FE engine in the feed pickup. Their coil gave up . I’m running a stock coil for a the last year . No issues
What is so great about a petronix 3 ? Is that just a Hei Module ? I think I have the old "Standard Ign" modules in my GM distributors ,
Never said electronics wasn't the way to go now days, in fact running a hei module on my 440 mopar oem electronic distributor. My point with point distributors are there are many still out there in muscle cars turning 6200 just like the GTO I worked on with no problems. Also as stated I have a complete kit here for a vw, if someone on the forum here can get it to run more than 10 minutes or so without it going dead I'm all for proving me wrong, especially after having it sent in and shipped backed telling me it had no problems. Distributors are not rocket science, in fact it's probably one of the easiest systems on an engine to set up. Especially when your working with electronics, ain't much there but make sure of reluctor clearance, ground, and hot wires. Timing isn't going to make one fall off at 5000 when you have 2 identical distributors only difference is spark signal (points, pick-up). With both distributors set up the same, the only variable at that point is initial timing and that 2 was identical at 10° btdc. But yet using the same coil and resistor that came with the pertronix kit the points would pull 6200 and the pertronix 4800 and **** out. So what other variable could it be? ...
Interference from anywhere in the electrical system, for example. As I mentioned earlier, alternators can be a big source of that, often easily diagnosed by disabling them - if the problem goes away when you run the engine w/o the belt on the alternator you are on to something. (Some times you may get that result too if the problem is something like a bad ground between engine and battery, the charging current causes a voltage drop between engine & battery ground causing problems in other systems so there can be a few different issues, but anyway, if that test gives you any kind of big change you are on to something in that area.) As for the unit that quits after 10 minutes I suspect it may be a heat related issue. Electronic tends to become heat sensitive when some components fail, and such a failure may not be obvious on a test rig, while mounting the ignition system in a hot engine bay is more likely to make it happen. Some local cooling at the suspect would give good clues - if it keeps running far longer, or spark comes back way faster than normal after quick cooling that implies it's sensitive to heat. Had a scooter with such a problem at work a few years back, started easily about once a day, ran well a short time, then ran poorly as long as you kept it running and wouldn't start again without cooling down for many hours. I ran it hot, left the scooter out in the hot summer weather, pulled the electronic ignition unit and threw it in the lunch room freezer for five or ten minutes and put it back on. Started easily once plugged back in = electronic failure confirmed. Ordered a new unit, problem solved.
@lostone have you tried twisting the pertronix module wires all the way to the coil, and using a dedicated ground back to the battery negative post?
I guarantee most of the people who have difficulty with the pertronix made one of 3 mistakes; 1 - They powered it with power downstream of the ballast resistor 2 - They did not properly shim the drive gear 3 - They didn't have a strong ground to the unit either directly or to the engine.
I guess I just installed the three of them wrongfully. But after taking the units to the factory a couple times, just giving me another unit(s?, seems like they might have told me where to look for the problem. They didn't. So I sought out some other old systems that worked -- right out and still do.
@rocket hot rod didn't try that. Kept the wiring away from any thing that would have caused interference from electrical impulses. @G-son that's exactly what I thought too. Especially on the vw. And the first time I talked to the pertronix people I told them the exact same thing, in one ear out the other. This was late fall so the daily average temp was probably around 65°, also p***ed this info on to them. I knew just by changing the distributor itself and not their coil or resistor that it had to be the module itself. When I sent the kit in I also wrote a long letter explaining everything, the fact that just changing the distributor itself cured the problem, not the coil, not the resistor, nothing but the distributor. Also explained Temps when this was happening. Also explained I thought it was the module dying when warmed up etc. Also noted that maybe there was little to no grease under module BUT that I didn't remove it to find out. Also explained that when it happened I could hold the distributor with my hand but it was hot but not unbearable. Gave them a complete list of everything it did, everything I tried, all the cir***stances around it and also that it didn't matter if it was mid-day and 65° or night 55°, 10 minutes max. I also wrote in rhe letter that I thought it was totally module electronic breakdown internally from heat not externally. The same things I told to tech on the phone I wrote into the letter I sent actually taped to the distributor. The GTO I actually don't know, it didn't matter how long the engine had ran. I could start it up, drive it 2 miles, peg the throttle and 4800 start misfiring. Drive it for an hour, shifting at 3200 and no problems, put the pedal to the floor and misfire. Wild thing was it was always 4800. Engine temp, ambient temp, road conditions, traction, etc nothing effected it except rpms and ALWAYS 4800. Coil was 5" inches away from distributor and again the distributor, coil and resistor and again just change the distributor itself and all in the world was perfect. Same cap, rotor, plugs, wires etc. Played with plug gap, .035 to .050, changing .005 at a time did absolutely nothing. BTW I always build my own distributors, shimming gear clearance, checking bearing clearance etc. As I also stated I had built this distributor with points and turned 6200, put their module into it and that was it. The replacement I used AFTER setting this one up was built identical. The module one was an oem 65 GTO and the one I used as a test rig was out of my 66 GTO. Both 389 4-speed. Both set up with 24° degrees mechanical advance at 2400, no vacuum advance. So a total of 34° Like I said only variable was the module vs points. I think that module was again an internal problem. ..
I have a Pertronix 'under the cap' module in my avatar (installed by the PO) and it's been reliable for well over ten years... but I nonetheless keep a set of points and condenser in the glove box, just in case. So with that said, I'm not a big fan of those types of ignitions. And the motor is warmed up, but not what I'd call HiPo. I doubt it sees over 5K rpm. The problem IMO is while the miracle of miniaturization allows for getting all the tech under the cap, the tradeoff is you can't use as robust components. Size matters when switching currents and while it's possible to make them work, they end up working harder and can produce more heat. Excess heat leads to failures, making these considerably more sensitive to minor faults and connected load. And if you're looking at this type, look for one that has an 'auto shutoff' feature. These don't like being left on without the motor running, the main failure of the Pertronix I as it lacks this. The II and III versions do have this feature. And besides being able to pretty much 'hide' the install, they are generally less expensive... but remember, you usually get what you pay for. And also remember, these are marketed as 'conversions'. While different versions have some 'performance' features, if it's high performance you're after even Pertronix recognizes the inherent limitations of the 'under the cap' units and sells external box ignitions for those uses. I was an early adopter of electronic ignition, installing my first conversion in the mid-70s. The first photocell types were terrible and nearly soured me on them. But once the reluctor type showed up reliability improved markedly, although they still couldn't manage 100% at first. I had the same problem @lostone had with one (not a Pertronix unit), although it only did it when my then-current wife was driving car (I took a lot of heat over this! LOL). I finally removed that one after it blew the mufflers off the car... I finally did a deep dive into the various systems being offered and how they work and settled on an MSD 6A driven by a Ford Duraspark distributor. I've never looked back, that's my go-to now. MSD took a reputation hit in the late '90s/2000s when Chinese counterfeits flooded the market but I've never had any issues. I haven't bought one since Holley acquired them, so they are a bit of an unknown now.
Page 4: I have yet to meet a person that has actually truthfully performed this test, despite the first three words in the body of the instructions being "It is imperative". I almost never find clean grounds on initial installation, and have to immediately correct them, often adding a dedicated ground wire. It is possible that tech support is ***uming that everyone is reading the instructions, understands them, and is following them. In all of my years of serving customers, I have never had a positive experience when questioning someone about them actually following instructions. It is entirely likely that tech support is reluctant to approach this for the same reason. I worked in the tech sector for decades. Hell hath no fury like an end-user finding out what user-error is. Every time I have had one of these fail it was directly, exactly because I failed to faithfully follow the explicit instructions. Every time I have had a customer have one of these fail it was directly, exactly because THEY failed to faithfully follow the explicit instructions.
And I'll include myself in that group. I've had multiple Pertronix units and never performed this test. That said, in lieu of this fail-safe test, I've just taken extra steps to ensure I have a strong ground, which I seem to have been successful in achieving. But your post and point is well taken. It is a critical aspect of installation that this condition be met for the system to operate properly. It's often overlooked.
I spoke with a young man years ago, he told me he had a blown fuse in a system. He went on to say he had a box of new fuses he tried them all, he said the whole box of fuses were bad. Yikes!
SBC with carb. Do you open the spark plugs up 10 as they suggest ? Igniter 111 Drove the car today has the old zip back. Engine is basic stock with 1985 GM Corvette cam.
I run the gap that the spark plug manufacturer suggests. They know what they made, and spark plugs don't know what engine they are in (or if they are in a propane fueled potato cannon). That is most often a much bigger gap than original plug gaps from the trad-era.
@gimpyshotrods Well, that's a truth with a modification. The spark plug itself may not know what it's in, but plenty of things around it are affected by the spark length. We have a finite amount of energy coming from the ignition coil. A relatively small amount from a points ignition, while electronic systems may put out quite a bit more. (That's why some got names like HEI - High Energy Ignition.) That amount energy will give us a compromise between two things, spark voltage and spark duration. Duration, being the time the spark is lit, needs to be long enough to heat up the surrounding fuel so it ignites, so we can't sacrifice too much of that. Generally slightly under one millisecond is regarded as a minimum (for anything except CDI ignitions). The voltage is affected by many factors. Spark gap: the length of the spark. The longer the spark, the higher voltage it needs. Compression & cylinder pressures: more increases the voltage requirement. This means a high compression engine has higher spark voltages than a low compression engine with everything else the same, and an engine running full throttle has higher spark voltage than the same engine at idle, as the cylinder pressures are quite low at idle - they have to be when you only let very little air into the cylinders. Fuel mix: The fuel vapour makes the air slightly more conductive, meaning a rich fuel-air mix needs less voltage than a lean mix. A lean mix also happens to be harder to ignite, which is why we got a bunch of more powerful electronic ignitions around the same time as we started caring about emissions. Engines were adjusted lean to reduce emissions, spark gaps were increased to produce a bigger spark that had a better chance to ignite those lean fuel mixtures, and the ignition system was beefed up to provide enough energy to get a descent spark duration even with such large gaps. At the same time we got larger diameter distributor caps, because the far higher voltages also means the spark can jump a further distance somewhere else, either directly to ground or to another post in the cap and go through a spark plug in another cylinder not currently under compression. Bigger diameter cap means bigger distance to the neighbouring posts in the cap, reducing the risk of cross firing in the wrong cylinder. So, if you run a modern electronic system that puts out a lot of energy you will probably be fine using bigger spark gaps, there's a good chance it even works better. Just keep it in mind if you find that you start getting carbon tracking in the distributor cap or any other problems due to the spark finding its own way to ground more often than "normal", as the higher voltage will make that happen easier. As long as that doesn't happen you should be fine. Bigger spark gaps on an old points ignition system may not be such a good idea. The manufacturers of the day knew what they were doing when they recommended a small gap, they knew what they had to work with and what it had to handle. With a bigger gap there is a risk the sparks becomes too short duration to do a good job at full throttle, especially once the spark plugs are getting a bit worn. Unfortunately it may not be obvious having a slight misfire at full throttle, high rpm, so such issues can go undetected.
I don't build anything with points. Throwing away power AND economy for the sake of tradition is short-sighted, especially when avoiding that lose-lose situation is readily easily obtained. Everything I build and have gets a modern ignition system (except the diesel stuff). Even my vintage motorcycles have hidden modern ignition systems. Modern fuels are absolutely not what ancient fuels were.
The Jalopy Journal
