[Cliff R]

Since the discussion drifted over into points and points conversions I'll add this.

I've had so many issues related to Pertronix in the last 20 years or so I will NOT touch them here with a 200' pole. I could fill dozens of pages up here with the issues we've seen and it got so bad in recent years I actually had to question customers I was sending carburetors to as to whether they were using Petronix in their stock distributors or not?

They have also changed (upgraded) the product several times. I was never fond of the early varieties and never once saw any improvement whatsoever over a stock set of GM points. What I've found in coming up on 5 decades of being in this hobby and rebuilding carbs adn distributors is that every single type of electronic "conversion" or "upgrade" is going to fail at some point. They don't tell you that anywhere in the advertising. It's not a matter of if, it's when. I've tried every possible HEI module "upgrade" ever sold at one time or another. The "bug zapping" high RPM/high performance modules usually work right out of the box, but fail a miserable death after being placed in service. This may be hours, days, weeks or months, but every single time I tested them one day you will go to start the vehicle and no-spark.

Over the decades of that sort of testing I kept my original mid-70's OEM "990" module in the glove box and kept going back to it.

As far as points I will only use USA made Delco points sets and condensers, and with all the "outsourcing" and "reboxing" going on these days I source as mentioned NOS from Ebay. ZERO issues with them and a stock set has plenty of spring tension for one of these engines, even in high performance use where we're spinning them past 5000rpm's. As far as replacing a good working set of points with anything else and expecting improved performance, it's NOT going to happen. Matter of fact I've replaced factory points distributors in race applications with MSD billet units and gained NOTHING anyplace at the track. Yes, not one milli-second in ET quicker anyplace on the run. Certainly that's not what anyone wants to here after spending big money on those sort of "upgrades", but that's just the way it really works with these things no matter how much advertising the company selling those products does to steer you in that direction........FWIW.......