Electronic vs. Solid State Ignition

If you want reliability and ease of maintenance, pertronix is definitely it. I consider it the single best upgrade I ever did to my f134. The Jeep ran better the second I put the pertronix in than it ever did with fiddling with point gaps and dwell settings, blah, blah, blah.

 

20% more HP with a header? so that would give you, what, 56mph top speed?

 

x2

 

Clifford performance has one.
134 F&L Head Headers

 

I don' have a problem with working on points. I am 64 yrs old and have had half a dozen cars and 4 or 5 motorcycles with points. The only one that left me dead was when a condenser went bad and that was my fault. It was mounted between the head and the distributor and was a bear to get out without a right angle screw driver, so I never changed it... Till it died.

 

I put a Pertronix in the Jeepster and it has been very nice to not have to worry about that particular component anymore.

 

Did you guys that use Pertronix module use their coil and wires also or did you stay with stock?

 

I used the stock coil and wires on the F100. Pertronix coil on my Jeepster only because I got it in a package deal.

 

If I read the Petronix site right, they don't have one for my 58 with IAY4012 distributor. What kit are some of you guys using?

 

Two is One, and One is None.
A spare set of points is ten bucks.

 

I used a stock coil and wires on my pertronix. It wasn't that I had a hard time setting points, the benefit of the pertronix is that you don't have to worry about it at all. Points go out of adjustment, and there's a slow and unnoticeable decline in performance until you realize it and clean/adjust/replace the points. Pertronix is literally set it and forget it, in my case almost 20 years of use. Try that with points! And, I carry a spare set of points that I can easily swap in in the off chance my pertronix dies.

 

You sure you have an IAY4012, and not an IAD4012? If it is an IAD4012 , you would need a 1541 module.

 

Pretty sure.

 

Man your is a lot easier to read than mine is. I ended up pulling the distributor out to read it. On the other hand it made installing the Pertronix module a breeze to do. Just wrap the base above the shaft in shop rags and stick it into your vice on your bench. Or like my bench there is a hole about a foot in from one forward corner that is actually the right size for holding the distributor.

 

So did installing the Pertronix help with your bench dependability? Couldn't resist, sorry.

 

I put the Pertronix on my '62 with the hotter coil because the mechanical advance mechanism in my original distributor was messed up. However, I rebuilt the old distributor completely and carry it around with me, just in case the other one fails. That happened to me before in another vehicle. No gain at all in performance that I can tell by switching to electronic. They say that the coil is not to be used with standard points, but that is most likely because of the hotter spark. It runs fine with the hot coil and the standard points, but over time, I would imagine that it would burn up the points. I had this problem when I put marine coils on a 3-cylinder, 2-stroke Kawasaki motorcycle I built up as a kid. The addition of a ballast resistor with a shorting switch for starting and racing took care of that problem. The advantage of the electronics is that you don't need to adjust points. That's all...