Re: How my MSD Failed Today! [WAS: The Commute From Hell]

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

As the putrid festering facial boil erupted, Tom Harais
<tjhemh@domain.elided> yelled:

>What will the Pertronix be buying you that you don't have? I assume your
>running points at this point?

Simply put... triple redundancy!

As you may know, the Pertronix Ignitor replaces the breaker points and can
operate as a completely internal stand alone fully electronic ignition
system.  It has a very good reputation for long term reliability.  The only
thing negative I've ever heard about it recently is something about a
magnet came unglued from the plastic reluctor (easily fixed by the owner I
think).  It can handle high voltage (a large plug gap), but it lacks the
multi-spark feature of MSD.

Why would I want one of these then?  Because I absolutely hate running
plain points alone in my distributor... unless it's a last resort, which it
happens to be today!  I'd like to have the Pertronix to run my ignition
system alone *or* have the Pertronix as an electronic trigger for the MSD.
As has been explained before, I'd have essentially a triple redundant
ignition system with the Pertronix / MSD / breaker-points.  With using a
point distributor to trigger my MSD 6A, I have only one extra level of
ignition redundancy.  As I explained with my post about the MSD failure
today, I was forced to switch to my only backup system... the
breaker-points alone.  Because I was using the MSD system, I have the plug
gap set pretty wide.  This is bad news for the long term health of the
points, so I need to either regap the plugs or stop using the points.  I'd
rather have disconnected the MSD and had the electronic Pertronix system as
the fall back (with the points in the glove box as a reserve).

Northern Auto Parts Warehouse (www.naparts.com) sells the Pertronix for
only $55.95 + UPS shipping.  The cheapest I've ever heard of.  It's
supposed to arrive by next Tuesday via ground.  BTW, they had no listing
for any IH vehicle application, but had a listing for the IH 345 under some
sort of agricultural listing.  The salesman initially said they couldn't
help me until I insisted that Owen Minor here in Tacoma bought one from
them and that they needed to dig further.  Strange the listings are the way
the are, but in the end they had what I wanted in stock... "agricultural"
listing or not. <grin>

Make sense?

John


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