im going to upgrade my ignition system to a mallory optical system. what i had was pertronics ignitor II with a flame thrower II and i was wondering if i can use the flame thrower II with the mallory unit? or if there is a good proformance coil i could use? and i was curious to here if any one has tried one of the mallory ignition boxs for multi-spark?

 

I know you are spending money, but are you really upgrading your system? It is the nature of coils for the voltage to build until the spark plugs fire - and that is as high as they go!

It does not matter if you have a coil that can put out 10 million volts, if it fires at 35KV all the time. If you have to change coils it will be because of some mismatch in the primary circuit, not to get better voltage out the secondary.

I also question the multi-spark feature. What happens is that a second spark is generated some time after the first, just in case there was a misfire. It takes some time for the coil and other circuits to recover from the first spark, so this spark comes very late in the ignition cycle. For this reason the second spark only works at low RPM, and is turned off as the engine RPM goes up.

It takes several degrees (engine degrees are used as a measure of time here) for the coil to recover - so if you are running normal engine timing the second spark happens very late - often after TDC. Even if it does fire the fuel/air mixture that the first spark didn't, the piston is already past the best point for peak pressure, and most of the energy is wasted anyway.

In addition, if the fuel mixture failed to fire under the ideal conditions experienced by the first spark, how likely is it to fire under the less than ideal conditions found by the second?

Mallory makes a good unit, and it helps on high RPM race engines, but I do not think you will see any improvement over your Pertronics setup in normal driving.

I am not an expert, perhaps someone who has changed a pertronics unit for a mallory can tell us his experience in normal driving.

 

northey87, I don't think you are updrading, just spending more money. IMHO unless you are seriously racing the truck and are in the points chase, the only thing you will notice is the pretty red labels and the hole in your wallet.

For street use, electronic ignition is electronic ignition. Once you have the wider plug gap, hotter coil, and triggering device, you have it all. This can be done with the Dura-spark Ford unit, Pertronix, Crain, or other brand. You don't have to spend big bucks to get an upgrade from points.

John