[Healeys] pertronix failure

[Michael Oritt]

John--

This is what I like about Pertronix or the like)--when they fail they
simply fail!  You don't have to check if the dwell is wrong, if the
condenser is faulty, if the little insulating washer on the distributor
post has worn through and grounded everything out, etc. etc.  Simply remove
and replace either with another Pertronix (truly they rarely do fail) or
with the points set you kept for just this situation.

While the latter solution is fine for an alongside-the-road scenario when I
am racing I rarely have time to go through the process of hopefully finding
the problem and checking it out as each wrong fix costs me a session on the
track so while I am fine with points sets for street cars I really do like
the simplicity of dealing with suspect electronic modules.

Hope you and Cindy are doing well.  Brenda and I were out in
Charlottesville a few weeks back scouting around for properties as we are
thinking about moving further south and unfortunately I did not think to
give you a call prior to the visit as possibly we could have gone a bit
further west and met up.

BTW I have had a Mallory Unilite in my 100 for maybe 11-12 years and it has
never let me down, probably because it knows there is a replacement unit in
the boot!

Best--Michael Oritt

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 9:34 AM, John Vrugtman <javrugtman at htcnet.org> wrote:

> I thought I would share an interesting experience with a pertronix ignitor
> yesterday.  The car, with a BJ8 engine, had been running for years with the
> ignitor with no problems at all, when suddenly on a trip of less than 100
> miles it just quit.  Other than determining it had no spark, we could not
> find anything wrong on the side of the road, even after replacing the coil,
> the ignitor module, rotor, cap and wires and disconnecting all other wires
> from the coil.  Towed it home and resumed checking, but still found
> nothing; then just for grins removed the magnet cap that triggers the
> ignitor and low and behold there at the base of the cam were all six
> magnets.  The holding sleeve had come unglued letting the magnets fall
> out.  One other thing, we replaced them and re glued the sleeve, but the
> car would only run on 3 cylinders.  Found out from Pertronix that the
> magnets have to be aligned by polarity to work properly.  The point learned
> for me is we overlooked the magnet cap because everyone knows magnets don't
> go bad.
>
> John
>
>
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