David Massey wrote:
>
> Message text written by "Kai M. Radicke"
> >Well first of all, when I purchased my Ignitor in Feb of 1999 and
> installed
> >it I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why the car wasn't
> >running well. It eventually was found that the Ignitor's magnetic collar
> >only had four working magnets in it! I call to Pertronix and they
> promptly
> >sent out a replacement collar. Tuned the car since then, and it was
> >alright... but there have been times with the mysterious misses at highway
> >speeds. And I know when I was running points and condensor from purchase
> >of the car in Dec of 1998, until Feb of 1999 I had no problems... even
> though
> >this was in the depths of the PA winter.
>
> The Crane unit comes with about six interupter wheels to cover any and all
> four, six and eight cylinder applications. But even when you make things
> fool proof they make a better fool. I heard of a case where a TR6 owner
> had a Crane profesionally installed and the lads put in a four slot
> interupter.
>
> >I just am not happy with it, and for the $95 retail price I can think of
> no
> >reason to do away with the points and condensor. I haven't seen any
> >improvement from it, and it seems many people's professional opinions of
> the
> >unit isn't that great.
Dave Massey added:
> The Crane is about the same price and provides no performance improvements
> but I have experienced, nor have I heard of any low voltage problems. In
> fact, most report improved cold starting. And there is the advantage of
> "set it once and forget it."
>
> The advantages of the pertronix over the Crane are:
> 1) it all fits in the distributor. If appearances are important the
> pertronix has no finned electronic module to clutter the engine bay. On
> the other hand one can always locate the Crane module out of sight. You'll
> be hard pressed to find the Crane module on my TR8 (but then there is so
> much clutter under there that's not all that hard.)
> 2) the magnetic pick up is less sensitive to dirt. But then one can clean
> the optical pick up (used by Crane) with a little alcohol and, unless the
> conditions are extreme, this doesn't have to be done very frequently. I've
> run a Crane on my TR6 for 3 or 4 years without problem one.
I'll jump in here, feet first, and mention that over the last couple of
years, there have been a number of people asking about problems with a
Pertronix unit recently installed. All have said eventually that they
received good service from Pertronix when they had a defective pickup.
But, I can remember only one instance of someone having trouble with an
Allison/Crane unit, and that was with installation, and the problem
turned out to be with the way the rotor was made and was unrelated to
the Crane/Allison.
I've talked to only one person who had a module fail--that was because
he had installed it vertically on the fenderwell with the end with the
wiring bundle pointing up, and then later pressure-washed the engine
compartment. Of course, the module filled up with water and fried itself
when he tried to start the car. Hearing that, I put additional sealer on
the wiring bundle and mounted it in such a way that it would drain. Have
had no problem with it in three years.
I will say this, though--the voltage is high enough that in very wet
conditions (and here in the southwest, that means flash flooding), if
water in the distributor cap doesn't stop the car from running, the
arcing inside the cap makes a real mess of the cap--creates carbon
tracks and pits around distributor terminals that effectively make the
cap worthless.
Cheers.
--
Michael D. Porter
Roswell, NM
[mailto: mporter@zianet.com]
`70 GT6+ (being refurbished, slowly)
`71 GT6 Mk. III (organ donor)
`72 GT6 Mk. III (daily driver)
`64 TR4 (awaiting intensive care)
|