I'm sure I've posted about my run ins with pertronix on this forum in the past. This has been 20 years ago so the theory that parts are even worse now doesn't apply to the issues I was having.
I had 2 cars I was using it on. My wife's 71 454 corvette and my 70 RA Formula. The vette seemed okay and was trouble free for the short time I owned the car after the swap.
The Firebird was a different story. On the highway that thing would shut down like you turned off the key. After 15 minutes it would fire back up like nothing was wrong. A few more miles and the same thing. I finally got off the highway and took the backroads. The car dying at 70 mph with cars everywhere is a bit unnerving, and dangerous. I figured at least on back roads if it dyed I'd have a place to pull off without getting killed.
However cruising slower speeds on the back roads seemed to make it happy and no more problems. Next trip on the highway the same thing happens.
Pertronix was a stand up company. Sent the kit back in and they tested everything and told me it was a faulty module. Sent out a new one. Installed that and exact same scenario. Highway cruising for a few miles the car would just die. Again Pertronix tested that setup and said the module was faulty and sent another new one. That one is still sitting on the shelf to this day. I reinstalled the points on the bird and it's been flawless for the last 20 years.
I eventually came to the conclusion that since Pontiac buries the distributor in the back and below the intake, the extreme heat was taking it's toll on that module. With very little air flow back there, and high rpm highway driving, that thing would overheat and shut down. Pertronix agreed telling me they do have a protection feature built in and they will shut down to protect themselves. Low rpm back road cruising kept things cool enough to not have a problem. I've never fooled with them since and have absolutely no interest in switching any of the cars over with any conversion offered today. The points serve me perfectly fine on 4 different vehicles here and are daily driven.
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