Re: ignition reliability

[jlandry@domain.elided (John A. Landry)]

When the truth serum kicked in, Doug Rasmussen <76075.2276@domain.elided>
blurted out...

>OK John,
>
>  I've heard nothing but good things about the Pertronix, but it's going to
>go out some day, right?  And when it goes, it's probably going to be a
>catastrophic failure, working one minute,   dead the next.
>  Having a set of points in your glove box for redundancy isn't going to
>help much when you're half way home on I-5 in a cold rain storm in the
>middle of winter.  I think I'll stick with my Mallory point dist.   At
>least when the points go it's usually a gradual thing.  My idea of
>redundancy is to be able to switch a few wires to get back to basics,. . .
>. points, coil, etc.

Valid point Doug, but since I already had my MSD quit dead (more or less) both
on I5 (thankfully not in the rain) and in an intersection, I'm really no worse
off now with the Pertronix.  I forgot you had the dual point Mallory.  I
wouldn't toss it out either to go back to a Holley breaker-point dist.  But if
you change your mind, ya never know, Pertronix might have a kit for the
Mallory distributor also.

>  In my original message I forgot to mention a benefit I got from my
>Jacobs.  The engine I first installed it on was a plug fouling oil burner. 
>After the Jacobs, it was still an oil burner, just didn't foul the plugs
>anymore.  Come to think of it, that was quite a benefit.

While my engines not much of an oil burner (yet... it only has 201,500 miles),
the plugs were *very* clean with the MSD and the Bosch Platinum plugs.  I
suppose having a slightly lean air / fuel ratio helps in that department too.

Regards,

John

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