[Healeys] DM6A disty query

[Steve Gerow]

Couple of comments:

 

At the California Healey Week you may have seen on speed channel lately, a
number of people had capacitor failure in their points-type ignitions. That
is the current weak point with those - not the points. If you're fortunate
enough to have a NOS or original capacitor you're good to go probably for
the life of the car. The current replacements regardless of source are
evidently made in China and are having a 10% failure rate - I heard that
from a very well-informed source.

 

Pertronix has had some issues as well - but since that is their lifeblood,
you'd think they would take it a great deal more seriously than someone for
whom capacitors are just one of hundreds or thousands of things they sell.

 

IMHO the main danger with a Pertronix is inadvertently frying it by hooking
the wires up incorrectly.

 

Belt & suspenders here: I run pertronix and carry a spare distributor all
set up with points and a wiring diagram for hooking both of them up. My
theory is if I fry the pertronix, I might just fry the replacement too, in
the heat of battle out on the road somewhere, so better to replace it with
the points.

 

--

 

Steve Gerow

Altadena, CA, USA

BN6