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Old 01-02-2020, 07:16 PM
grahamp grahamp is offline
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Don’t seem to be many fans of Pertronix, the car has run well with the distributor ignitor but no tach so I will go back to points.

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Old 01-02-2020, 07:23 PM
mback12000 mback12000 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by grahamp View Post
Don’t seem to be many fans of Pertronix, the car has run well with the distributor ignitor but no tach so I will go back to points.
You're far more likely to find yourself on the side of the road with the Pertronix than the points. If you want an electronic ignition there are much better choices IMO.

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Old 01-02-2020, 07:27 PM
Tomslemans67 Tomslemans67 is offline
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I believe Lectric Limited has a unit you can install and keep the original tac. Tom

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Old 01-02-2020, 08:36 PM
TedRamAirII TedRamAirII is offline
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Something is wrong, my Pertronix has run for 20 years. Starts at the bump of the key. I do carry a spare distributor with points and a ballast resistor....just in case.

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Old 01-02-2020, 08:41 PM
tom s tom s is offline
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I have never had a issue in the 20 plus years I have used them.I always have them installed by someone like Suntuned that also rebuilds and curves my dizzy.Have them in 3 cars now and a couple spare dist in my drawer plus 2 engines that are spares .FWIW,Tom

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Old 01-02-2020, 08:44 PM
mback12000 mback12000 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TedRamAirII View Post
Something is wrong, my Pertronix has run for 20 years. Starts at the bump of the key. I do carry a spare distributor with points and a ballast resistor....just in case.
Poor reliability doesn't mean they're ALL bad.
Also, their product may not be the same quality it was 20 years ago. Wouldn't be the first thing that has gotten worse.

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  #67  
Old 01-02-2020, 10:26 PM
Schurkey Schurkey is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun Tuned View Post
Well it looks like I stumbled onto to something yesterday....

Google search
Standard LX807....
Looked at Amazon for that number.

They suggest LX809, LX811, LX813, LX814, LX816 which are also "electronic conversions" fitting various applications. For all I know there are additional "conversion" numbers that Amazon either doesn't carry, or that I haven't stumbled onto.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sun Tuned View Post
After talking to the tech guru at pertronix, I found out if it doesn't come in their box and have their stickers on the actual Hall effect... it's not theirs...

...Apparently Standard is manufacturing a knockoff of the pertronix. Oreilleys around here is marketing the thing as a pertronix. It's not. Just call one and ask if they have an lx807, and they will tell you all about it.
Just because Pertronix has disowned the Standard-branded products, doesn't mean they didn't build the thing. Perhaps they sell in bulk to Standard at a discount, part of the discount is that they will never have to deal with warranty or "Tech line" issues on Standard-boxed product. So no "Pertronix" box and label, and no after-sale support.

Or the Communists really have knocked-off another product, and Standard is the importer/collaborator/patsy. This would be disturbing, 'cause I previously had a lot of respect for Standard and their upmarket Blue Streak line--but the last time I bought Blue Streak (a "Ford"-style fender-mounted starter solenoid) it was also Made in China, so it went back.




For my part, I consider the Pertronix about as suspect as Mallory Uni-Lite; both are under-designed, lacking normal and ordinary protection circuitry, and therefore unreasonably fragile.


Last edited by Schurkey; 01-02-2020 at 11:03 PM.
  #68  
Old 01-02-2020, 10:31 PM
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Bill Hanlon Bill Hanlon is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by TedRamAirII View Post
Something is wrong, my Pertronix has run for 20 years. Starts at the bump of the key. I do carry a spare distributor with points and a ballast resistor....just in case.
Having that spare ready is what is keeping the Pertronix running.

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  #69  
Old 01-03-2020, 12:11 AM
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Some tachs require a small resistor in the trigger wire. Ran into this problem w/Sun mini tach, contacted Pertronix and was given a part number from Radio Shack. If unable to get correct resistor, PM me w/address and I'll send you one of my spares. I am no longer working on customer's cars and my mini tach is now fed from HEI and of course Corvette is mechanical, so I am set.

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  #70  
Old 01-03-2020, 01:49 AM
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It's always the things you can't quite feel that might not be good for your engine. I checked out two distributors with Pertronix I conversions this week. First was out of a 66 GTO engine I'm rebuilding and when I ran the distributor up on the Sun machine the module was dropping different cylinders sporadically, and probably not often enough to be felt when driving. Checked the little rectangular weights in the wheel, clearance, and other areas but the module was just neglecting to fire every now and then. I had another distributor given to me with a Pertronix I conversion so I dug that out figuring I'd donate the module if it worked. No dropouts but every once in awhile a ghost firing would occur on one of the cylinders about 15 degrees before the actual signal. Coming up on a compression stroke is definitely not a good time to toss in extra spark. Checking things out didn't provide any solutions. I took time to swap parts between the two units until I was assured that the problem was in the modules and not in the magnet rings or elsewhere. Ordered out a Fast Xri and the ignition curve is now silky smooth all the way up.

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  #71  
Old 01-05-2020, 01:21 AM
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I've had good luck with a conversion kit for my Ventura when it had the 350. So when I put the 455 in it I ran their distributor and coil, it ran good for 6 months and after that I had problems all the time. The last straw is when I crank it up at a car cruise and it sounded like a cannon going off through the exhaust. I put a MSD in it and it fired right up all the time.

  #72  
Old 01-13-2020, 05:38 AM
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When i bought my car it had a pertronix distributor in it, it woked great for 2 years (was probably on the car a few years before i bougth it) until i had intermittent start issues, changed the coil over but still had intermittent start issues, tried a different module, same deal.
Finally i bougth a D.U.I distributor, and all issues went away, dont really know what was the problem was, maybe pickup coil?

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Last edited by djustice; 01-13-2020 at 05:39 AM. Reason: Spelling
  #73  
Old 01-13-2020, 11:34 AM
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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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Old 01-13-2020, 12:25 PM
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It was popular to use their kits in vintage race motorcycles for a while ... but they just didn't live on certain bikes, and they did on others. Same scenario .... apparent heat related failures. Frustrating because they would work like a charm in the pits.

I replaced all mine with magneto/CDI which are astonishingly reliable.

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Old 01-13-2020, 02:42 PM
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What I've been doing most recently, if you really want electronic maintenance free stuff, is simply keep the points distributor and fire an MSD box with it.

Lots of benefits and no draw backs.

Points simply become a trigger for the box and no longer supplies a spark, so the points need no further maintenance and last for ever.

You gain a rev limiter and a multispark discharge.

The real beauty of it is that if the box ever quits, I can simply swap 2 wires on the coil and run off the points in a matter of 30 seconds, eliminating the box all together, and get home. Extremely easy road side fix. No more modules to fail, no spare parts in the glove box needed, no tools required.

In my opinion it's even better than an HEI. I've done that too in the past and yes I know when those modules quit you can carry a spare and swap it out. Been there done that. Still not very fun trying to pull the cap and rotor off, removing wires so you can rotate the cap out of the way, dealing with those tiny module screws and changing all that on the side of the road, and hope you don't drop something, lol. Especially no fun on a Pontiac that doesn't exactly have easy access to the distributor. With the points/MSD I'm simply plugging in 2 wires and done. It's clean, it's simple, and still looks completely stock.

The other nice thing is you aren't buying these cheap Chinese distributors with god knows what kind of quality control these days, worrying about bushings etc... and getting harder to find a good used OEM HEI these days that doesn't have a wobbling shaft.

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Old 01-13-2020, 03:23 PM
mback12000 mback12000 is offline
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It's not zero maintenance, you still have rubbing block wear. But I see your point (get that pun). I actually trigger my Holley Dominator ECU with points (with factory distributor) although I use the computer for full electronic timing curve control as I have locked out both mech and vacuum advance. I did it temporarily for a first start, but then after dynoing the setup it proved to work perfectly and my laziness kept it. You need to check the point gap, the rubbing block still wears and when it does your timing changes.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Formulajones View Post
What I've been doing most recently, if you really want electronic maintenance free stuff, is simply keep the points distributor and fire an MSD box with it.

Lots of benefits and no draw backs.

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  #77  
Old 01-13-2020, 03:33 PM
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I just added one more to the Pertronix failure list. A friend went with the Pertronix module in the HEI body so he would have a rev limiter. Sometimes car wouldn't start and sometimes it would misfire going down the highway. I loaned him one of my old HEI's I had around and the problems went away. Pertronix is such a great premise and such a poor execution of a product.

Now about those points... I'd say that the biggest problem with points really isn't contact wear as it is with point bounce and erratic firing. It's a very unusual set of points that fire precisely up to 5,500 to 6,000 RPM. Most sets are babbling and doing strange things on the distributor machine way before any decent RPM is reached. You can take away the current and give the points an easy ride, but that mechanical spring in there is still the weak link. I think I mentioned before that I thought my Mallory X points were great back in the mid 80's until dyno time exposed just how much horsepower they were robbing. It would be better if points just shut down so you would know there was a problem, but they perform well enough to hide the faults. On a distributor machine you are looking at eight arrows, and when those individual arrows individually start dancing and moving around several degrees from where they should be you know your timing curve just went out the window. Doesn't seem to matter much on brand or if they have or don't have the attached condenser whether they work fairly decent. Even the best of points have some movement when watching the machine, and then you toss in a good electronic trigger and it looks like the arrows are printed on the revolving disk.

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  #78  
Old 01-13-2020, 07:56 PM
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Originally Posted by mback12000 View Post
It's not zero maintenance, you still have rubbing block wear. But I see your point (get that pun). I actually trigger my Holley Dominator ECU with points (with factory distributor) although I use the computer for full electronic timing curve control as I have locked out both mech and vacuum advance. I did it temporarily for a first start, but then after dynoing the setup it proved to work perfectly and my laziness kept it. You need to check the point gap, the rubbing block still wears and when it does your timing changes.
Actually you don't even have to worry about rubbing block wear. The box doesn't care what the dwell is. As long as the points open and close that's all it cares about.

Actually on the other cars I run strictly points in, I don't even worry about it. I check it once a year with a dwell meter and most often then not I don't even have to touch them.

I like your idea of running the ECU, sounds interesting.

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Old 01-13-2020, 07:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lust4speed View Post
I just added one more to the Pertronix failure list. A friend went with the Pertronix module in the HEI body so he would have a rev limiter. Sometimes car wouldn't start and sometimes it would misfire going down the highway. I loaned him one of my old HEI's I had around and the problems went away. Pertronix is such a great premise and such a poor execution of a product.

Now about those points... I'd say that the biggest problem with points really isn't contact wear as it is with point bounce and erratic firing. It's a very unusual set of points that fire precisely up to 5,500 to 6,000 RPM. Most sets are babbling and doing strange things on the distributor machine way before any decent RPM is reached. You can take away the current and give the points an easy ride, but that mechanical spring in there is still the weak link. I think I mentioned before that I thought my Mallory X points were great back in the mid 80's until dyno time exposed just how much horsepower they were robbing. It would be better if points just shut down so you would know there was a problem, but they perform well enough to hide the faults. On a distributor machine you are looking at eight arrows, and when those individual arrows individually start dancing and moving around several degrees from where they should be you know your timing curve just went out the window. Doesn't seem to matter much on brand or if they have or don't have the attached condenser whether they work fairly decent. Even the best of points have some movement when watching the machine, and then you toss in a good electronic trigger and it looks like the arrows are printed on the revolving disk.
I've been using the Accel points for decades. Rock solid to 7,000 rpm in a couple of small blocks here. Matter of fact the points in my bird were over 20 years old. Still ran perfectly, actually ran it's fastest time ever on that set. Put a new set in and haven't duplicated that time yet, lol. The set in the nomad have been in there since the mid 80's LOL

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Old 01-13-2020, 08:17 PM
mback12000 mback12000 is offline
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Originally Posted by Formulajones View Post
Actually you don't even have to worry about rubbing block wear. The box doesn't care what the dwell is. As long as the points open and close that's all it cares about.
If the dwell (point gap) changes, then the timing will change. This takes away one of the advantages of going to a breakerless design. Resulting timing creep will cost fuel economy and performance which may not be so obvious. This is similar to what Lust4Speed pointed out in his post - the inconsistent timing trigger (seen on the distributor machine) of bad points or the Pertronix is hurting you even though you may not realize it. I think most people who claim Pertronix has served them well are judging it by the fact the engine "apparently" runs well.

Yes, you're right, the ECU or MSD doesn't care what the dwell is, assuming they are "edge-triggered" devices. But the timing drift issue remains. My plan is still to ditch the points even though they work perfectly because mine are high spring pressure (to get rpm) and try the FAST points trigger replacement when I get around to it.

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Last edited by mback12000; 01-13-2020 at 08:51 PM.
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