In changing to a Pertronix Ignitor and Flame thrower Coil on my 292 y-block, I have verified with voltmeter that there is a ballast resistor/wire in the system as the voltage steps down to 6 volts with the key turned on. The recommendation is to remove the resistor or wire. Two questions;


1. Where is the wire/resistor and if its a wire (which I understand it usually
is on a ford of that era) do I just cut the wire out and re-splice.


2. Can I run without removing it, what would be the downside?


Thanks for the help.

 

I've done the exact same mod, the resister wire is a pink wire that runs from the back of the ignition switch and ends up at the coil. There is a bullet plug at the switch I disconnected, made a new wire and simply
' plugged in' and ran to the coil.

If its the flamethrower II and you dain't remove the resister wire, i don't think it gets enough voltage to actually fire. If it does, you're ultimately not getting the best spark for each firing stroke.

 

Great! just the information I was looking for. I will tackle it when I get off work this morning. Thanks for the information...


Dan

 

How well is the truck running now that you made the mod? I've been mulling this over, dumping the points and going with the Pertronix and flame thrower coil. Is it all the rage as advertised? You notice a difference at all - points vs. Pertronix?

 

F100 wannabe can probably answer that better than me as I'm still in the assembly process. I have used the Pertronix on my 73 Nova without any issues, and I've had that for about 3 years.

 

I've had the original flamethrower in a 289 mustang for over 11 years and it's NEVER missed a beat. It's hard to say it's mind blowing, but it just does it's thing without fail.
The pickup had a bad miss when I bought it so I was trying to eliminate it and changed several things at once before it was in the road. I did the flamethrower 2 and coil mod, but also an exhaust manifold and fuel pump at the same time. It got rid of the miss and to me, pulls better than before (351c.)
Fuel mileage is hard to tell because I wasn't driving it much beforehand.

As with the mustang, it starts easily, has no misses or hesitation and has no points. So all in all im
pretty happy.

 

The last time I saw the pink wire it ran from the ignition swich to the bulkhead connector. It was a different colour from there (under the hood) to the coil. If you can't get the terminals out of the connector you can drill a hole through the connector at the appropriate place.
Eric

 

^^^^^ yes that was the case 6t6. I spiced mine right before it went through the connector and left the old wire there incase I needed to go back for whatever reason.

 

petronix is really the way to go, ive been running them for over a decade.
your butt dyno wont know the difference, but you will know a difference every time you start it. as far as the claims of better fuel economy, your wallet will not notice.
I have ran these in boats too where it gets major abuse! (500 HP flatbottom vdrives)
never had an issue with them.
don't DWELL on changing, JUST DO IT! you wont regret it.
if you are a prepper, keep the points and hardware in the glove box, incase of the EMP blast.

 

I noticed no difference at all vs points with an Ignitor II and Flamethrower II coil. This comparison was in a freshly rebuilt distributor so it was not worn out like the distributors many people make these conversions with. The magnetic pickup is much more forgiving than points because there is no contact between the moving components and that can provide a performance increase when everything else is worn out.

 

You could leave the resistor wire in place if you install a relay to the circuit and use the resistor wire as a trigger. It only requires an inexpensive 30A relay. Pertronix offers a relay kit, but costs about $40 for $5 worth of parts.

 

Success!! Installed new distributer with new pertronix ignition and coil, then removed resistor wire and it fired up first time. Thanks for all the help.

 

Where have you guys gotten your pertronx unit and coil?

 

Ive got mine off amazon.com