Last week I did new gel cell battery, large cap conversion, new rotor, new ford racing wires, new autolite plugs, new msd blaster 3 coil... mmm, ya, that's all... scheesch...
Picked up a new dizzy from Napa, and grabbed a petronics(not the fancy one) from local speed shop thursday.

Went to my friends shop so I could be supervised.

Installed and gap'd the petronics on the new dizzy.
Pulled the plugs and gap'd to 0.047.
Marked the adapter, and yanked the old dizzy.
New dizzy on, wire it up.
Truck will not start. Rotate the dizzy back and forth... finally fires, but is running on 5 cylinders.
Yank the petronics, verify all magnets are in it.
Put it back on.
Truck fires, and is running on 5 different cylinders... and making a terrible clacking noise... no oil pressure.
Yank the dizzy, no oil driveshaft.
Pull the pan, burn my wrist on the block fishing out the driveshaft.
Install shaft.
Go to stab the dizzy back in an realize i forgot to mark where things were.
Rotate to 0 on the balancer.
Install dizzy.
Start truck, backfires thru the carb and nearly blows the eyes out of my friend.
Rotote dizzy 180*.
Get it running... on the first 5 cylinders.
Yank the petronics. Figure it's garbage.
Fire new points in.
Start the truck, bad miss.
Pull the plugs, set them back to 0.035.
Truck fires but is running rough.
Hook up the wide band and tune the carb idle down to 12.2:1 af ratio.
Idles pretty smooth.
Pull the points, fire the petronics back in.
Start the truck, and, runs like it's EFI.
Check voltage to the coil... 9.7, cannot find a ballast resistor anywhere.
Run out of time and patience.

Next week, run a direct wire from the ignition to the coil to achieve 12V at the coil, and regap plugs to .047.

On the positive side, the truck runs very smooth, and fires right up.

A simple 2 wire install became a 6 hour nightmare.

So, to those who may be doing this in the future.
Check voltage to your coil before you widen the gap on your plugs.
Be careful of the oil pump drive shaft, but know it can be fished out of the oil pan if you have shoulders like a brook trout and a wrist like a teenage girl.
Ensure you mark the dizzy!

man, I can screw anything up.

 

Sorry to hear of your adventure, the backfires sure add drama.

You can run a wire directly to the coil as long as the coil primary resistance is 1.5 ohms or higher, that would include the stock coil or the Flamethrower I. Anything lower and you have to run a ballast, the Pertronix I can only handle 8 amps. At least I think you can, what do your destructions say? Also, where are you getting your power for the Pertronix? Not off the coil I hope.

 

oh no...
yep, i ran both wires off the petronix straight to the coil...

 

That's a problem. Right now the pertronix is getting power from the resistor wire which is designed to drop the voltage for the coil. So the pertronix is probably only getting around 6 to 8 volts plus it's dragging down the voltage too.

The resistor wire and the coil primary windings are in series and form a voltage divider to deliver 6 to 8 volts to the coil. Tap anything else off that divider and you drag down the voltage plus overload the resistor wire with too much current.

The pertronix really needs 12 volts to operate at it's best. You need to tap into a power source that's switched hot in the run and start positions. What year truck do you have and does it have a ammeter or idiot light?

 

it's a '69.
I've got only the factory guages, but it is a proper meter, not a light.

So, should I run my red petronix wire straight to the ignition switch?
The black still goes to the coil?

I'm really bad with electricty, but is you can get this explained here, I'll print it off and have my buddy do it for me.

 

Cool! Here's where you tap off power from the ignition switch to the red wire of the pertronix. Laying on the floor looking up at the dash under the ignition switch, the bottom contact has two wires going into it, a fat and flexible pink or orange wire (in the pic on the left) and a thinner and stiffer red w/ green stripe wire (on the right). You want to tap off power from the thinner and stiffer red w/ green stripe wire (on the right).



The black wire from the pertronix still goes to the coil (-) terminal.

 

Thanks a million BB.
I'll try and save that pic. to my computer.
I really appriciate the help.

Mike

 

Hey BB.
got things going last week.
Friend cut the red and green wire and left it unhooked altogether.
ran power from the red/green stub on the ignition switch out to the coil.
Had to drive at night the other night, headlights were dim, dash lights barely illuminated at all, voltmeter indicated truck was not charging well.
Destroyed a starter soleniod today.
Which completly drained my fancy new gel battery.
Put a new solenoid on it, got jump started, drove 2 miles and the truck completly died.

Is this linked to the red/green wire left dangeling?
Or should I be looking for something else?

 

You have to TAP into the red/green wire while leaving it connected to where it was going. That wire goes to the regulator to turn it on so your charging system works. Cut it and you're running on the battery only.

 

Aughhhhh!!!

Thanks.
I'm off to put the Jeep battery in the truck, and head down to my friends.

 

Give him a big dope slap for me will ya?

 

haha.
well...
it's rig'd up.
I know you're kidding around, but, he's wayyy too nice a guy to slap... he was shameful and appolgetic for having caused problems.

Thanks again BB.

 

Well.
Truck has left me stranded again.
This time, the petronics 'box' in the dizzy melted down.
Wires leading away from it were seared brown, and the box itself split along the seam and melted goo has oozed out.

Broke down and took it to a shop where the owner/mechanic has a '69 F250 with 390 as his own daily driver, and, has exhaust gas anylizer.
Any luck at all, he'll get it sorted out and I can get this dang thing thru emmissions... maybe even drive it daily again with fear of needing the cell phone.

Frustrating.

 

I had the exact same problem this week with the Pertronix and I used BB's pics to wire it and have had no problems what so ever, you probably didn't want to here that -lol. Thanks BB

 

my pertronix was a simple thing to do, took all of 5 minutes and runs like a top. i got the super blaster coil and i hooked right to the coil. i didnt do the hooking the wire to the thinner red stripe thingy. does it make a differnce that my truck is a 70 f-250 or am i living on borrowed time ? my lights are bright and i charge excellent according to my gauges. it ran like a top, until i took it apart this spring the for a rebuild