[Formulajones]

It was the "made in the USA" gen 1's that I had all the issues with. My firebird just hated pertronix. Highway driving would just shut off. After a cool down it would fire like there wasn't a problem. 5 miles down the highway, shuts off again. Slower back road driving was fine. That thing would just heat up and turn itself off with constant higher rpm driving.
Pertronix was great in that they would swap the unit out. New one did the same thing. Pertronix again tested it as a bad piece and swapped it a second time no problem. The third brand new unit still sits in its box on the shelf today. I put points back in the car and it's been flawless for almost 30 years and 10's of thousands of miles.

Pertronix customer service.....excellent. The product......not so much

[Cliff R]

The problem with ALL electronic points conversions is that no matter how good they work they ALL eventually fail. This will never happen when you are sitting in front of Jegs or Summit Racing, so plan accordingly.

Pertronix used to be decent, but what they are selling today is so bad I wouldn't even think about going that direction. Before I retired from building carburetors they caused me a LOT of grief. EVERYONE wants to blame the carb guy when their new engine isn't up to par. I finally, after multiple issues with new engine builds where Pertronix were installed to replace points, traced the issues down to poor function at higher RPM's. Not sure why and don't care but after getting several carbs back that had nothing wrong with them I started asking more questions and Pertronix, along with quite few of these cheap Chinese HEI "knock-offs" were actually causing all the issues.

Not meaning to get off topic but what I have found with nearly ALL aftermarket "high performance" distributors is that the folks making them "re-engineer" the weights and center cam to get the timing in faster and all-in sooner. Problem with that is more times than not some of the timing is in at idle speed making idle tuning difficult if not near impossible. Second problem with that is that a well thought out engine build with optimum compression and well chosen camshaft doesn't want, need or respond well to having all the timing dumped on it right off idle. Save that deal for when you lower the compression for pump gas and install a short seat timing cam on a tight LSA. The lack of cylinder pressure and combustion efficiency/cylinder filling is going to require that type of tuning more times than not.

Anyhow, here is an email recieved this morning DIRECTLY related to buying an aftermarket "high performance" distributor and having idle tuning issues. I get these emails ALL THE TIME. Engine idle RPM fluctuates and stays higher after the engine warms up or it idles too slow after a hot restart. It's going to be your distributor 99 times out of 100, not the carburetor.....FWIW...

"Hello Cliff,

I was finally able to get out and do some driving. Carb is working good. I’m going to put an air/fuel gauge on to check cruise and wide open throttle.

My only issue is if you shut the car off and restart it right away it starts fine but idles very low u til you give it done gas then is fine…any ideas??"

If I had a nickel for every email or phone call I've got just like this one I'd buy a second beachfront home in Oak Island NC tomorrow!........

[Cliff R]

PS: one more note on points. Two things MUST happen if you are going to use your OEM distrributor. It needs to come apart for cleaning and lubrication. 50 year old factory grease isn't going to cut it.

The rubber advance pin sleeve is ALWAYS gone, so the curve will have more timing in it that what it was originally designed for.

More times than not the VA will be defective as well or the rubber in it so hard and cracked it's doomed right to start with.

Depending on the year of your factory points distributor the advance curve and how much timing it adds will need "adjusted" a bit. Robert (Sun Tuned) offers that service and is damn good at it. I'm retired from all that at this point so would rather not take in any more work as it interferes with throwing sticks for my dogs and taking my grand kids fishing.

You also need to make sure that the upper bushing in your points distirbutor has ZERO side-play. Most are fine. HEI's on the other hand for some reason wear the lower bushing and shaft pretty hard. Some also have the pins worn down and the holes in the weights all "egged out". I'd say the failure rate is at least 30 percent if not a tad higher. You'll also find a LOT of those POS weight/spring kits have been installed, so always pull the cap (or get pics is bought on-lne) and see what's in there before you purchase a used one on-line or at a swap meet.. Remarkably the factory center cams and weights are nearly ideal for performance work in most HEI's. They just need a positive stop welded in (the advance pin hits nothing and they rely on the "flats" on the center cam to stop advance when the flats on the weights reach them). All in all a good design for production use but very poor for high performance and high RPM's and you absolutely can NOT put light springs on the strock parts or plan on it adding 20 or so degrees at high RPM's when the weights overcome the built in stop.

In closing I have had a number of aftermarket HEI's sent here and I took a look at them, gently put them back together and returned them to the owners. Absolute pure pieces of bovine excrement......IMHO....

Attached is a pic of the distibutor gear from one of them, bought at Summit Racing by a local guy. The POS Chinese gear was worn to a knife edge in less than 200 miles!.....

[locomotivebreath]

+2 ^^^ those are basically all the symptoms my petronix III exhibited . Put in some delco points from the 70’s and set the dwell . Steady timing & idle rpm and very easy restarts . Even the vintage air doesn’t affect idle rpm much . It still drops about 150 but doesn’t attempt to stall .