Pertronix tips

Just went through a challenging Pertronix install. Wanted to post a few findings here for others, especially since Pertronix install info can be hard to find on their website and the instructions are for a plain vanilla install that doesn't work on many Slicks.

First, a few tips from Pertronix. Their help line runs from 7 to 5 PM CST and can be accessed at 1-800-827-3758.

1) The distributor sleeve and the top of the pickup (red box) must be closely aligned. If they aren't, it won't fire. Pertronix recommends putting a rubber O ring around the distributor shaft to cheat up the sleeve for proper alignment. Obviously this wouldn't matter with points so a lot of our trucks with swapped out distributors have shafts that don't always provide perfect alignment.

2) On many older Fords (1965, 1966 etc.), there is a resisting wire that sits behind the ignition wire. Its purpose is to drop the voltage to the coil to about 6V so the older coils won't burn up. If you read the Pertronix Instructions, they won't tell you that you need AT LEAST8V to fire the Ignitor II. They give you three configurations, but none of them address a resisting wire (loom wire?) as exists in our trucks. You will need to bypass the pink wire by running a 12V wire directly from the pink wire coming off the ignition switch to the coil per the wiring diagram.

3) Ground is everything. Make sure you reinstall the short (@2") ground wire inside the distributor that grounds the housing to the mechanical advance plate. Also consider a seperate wire to ground as the distributor itself may not provide a perfect path to ground.

Had I known that I had a defective Blaster II coil (truly a freak occurence), I would not have spent three hours from 11-2, two beers and a lot of angst making what should have been a 20 minute swap. Hopefully you will have a 20 minute install as 95% of people do.

 

i always use the ignitor I, and leave the ballast resister inline. i have one unit that is still working going on 28 years now

 

I hate to resurrect an OLD thread like this, but will the ignitor 1 run off of the lower voltage? I thought ALL pertronix ignitions needed a 12V source?

 

I am not sure you have a choice of ignitor 1 2 or 3, unless you have a old one laying around.

Here are the instructions for the ones you can buy now. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/02...files/1281.pdf

While they say to always leave the ballast resistor in place if the car or truck originally had one, they always wire the pertronix supply wire BEFORE the resistor. And they state the ignitor always needs a full 12v supply.