Re: flacky pertronics?

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

The aliens commander decided Eric Hegstrom <ehegstrom@domain.elided>
would make a perfect specimen for dissection, and he yelled...

>Well I have the resistance wire without the extra resistor. I just
>wanted to confirm. You're saying you're running the coil that says "USE
>BALLAST RESISTOR" on it hooked directly to the 12v (through the ign
>switch obviously) with the pertronics. I haven't let the smoke out of an
>electrical device lately so I will give it a try. Where's Tesla when I
>need him.

Eric,

Dan's experience and practices aside, I'd strongly urge you to take the
time to actually measure the coil resistance and connect the Pertronix
appropriately.  Keep in mind that the Pertronix will work with a low
resistance coil... for awhile... until it suffers a melt down.  Maybe you'd
be lucky and it will last a year.  Or maybe it might only last a month.

In my conversations with Pertronix some time back, their engineer told me
the number one reason they get returned units is owners who hook them up
directly to a low resistance coil and eventually burn them out.  He
indicated they can easily tel this type of failure when they examine the
units.  He said Pertronix has an unspoken policy of replacing any failed
unit no matter what the age (a de facto lifetime warrantee) *unless* they
suspect the owner fried it by hooking it up wrong.  I'm telling you this to
stress the importance of proper installation.

Like many others, I also didn't read the fine print carefully enough and
initially connected my Pertronix directly to an MSD Blaster III coil with
no resistor.  Someone here on the Digest pointed out to me the Blaster is a
low resistance coil and warned me about the danger to the Pertronix.
Luckily I was warned in time and I rectified the problem with a ballast
resister before I apparently did any permanent damage to the module.  I
later complained to Pertronix that the supplied instructions should make
the warnings of positively checking coil resistance more prominent... to
catch the readers attention during the usual quick installation.

The funny thing is, when I had the Pertronix connected directly to the
Blaster coil without a resistor, I had a terrible time trying to get a
dwell or rpm reading with any of my engine analysers.  I just got freaky
readings that made no sense.  When I added the ballast resistor, all the
strange problems disappeared and the engine idled and ran smoother.  My
assumption is that the Pertronix was somehow being overwhelmed by the
excess current and could establish a clean, proper voltage curve and
cutoff.

So don't take this lightly or you may eventually find yourself with a
worthless Pertronix and a voided warrantee.

Regards,

John L.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
jlandry AT halcyon DOT com      | 
Conservative Libertarian        |  "The road to  tyranny, we must never
Life Member of the NRA          |   forget, begins with the destruction
WA Arms Collectors              |   of the truth."
Commercial Helicopter - Inst.   |                     William J. Clinton
http://www.halcyon.com/jlandry/ |    10-15-95, speech at the Univ. of CT