i can set my 350 with 35 degres initial advance at idle. can go down to about 14 before it starts idleing rough. do i have my dist in wrong or is there something else going on here? about 3000 miles on rebuild, poston 118 (i think) cam that was never degreed, petronix, flame thrower coil. balancer appears to be good. i just cant seem to figure out what is going on wiith this engine. ideas anyone, brad o No:
mine was doing the same thing, then started running weird...i suspected the pertronix, and ditched it for points. i've still got a random (not isolated to one cylinder) miss...a friend swears up and down that i probably got a bad condensor. i can't see it being anything other than that or the coil...after i figure out the issue, we'll see if the timing wants to be normal or not...
I had a Chevy inline six that would do that. After going through absolutey everything, I came to the conclusion that the outer ring of the harmonic balancer had moved from the inner hub. Its only pressed on there with some eurathane or rubber like material. Its rare, but it can happen. My mark was way off, like 1/4 way. I brought it up on number one as close as I could and made a new mark with a dremel. I set the timing till it would ping , then I backed it off. My new mark showed up with the timing light then. I didn't trust it as 100% accurate, but it seemed to be with 4 degrees. I never looked back!
Ah, yet another PerTronix success story. The success was to remove it and go back to points, common procedure to to to fix the dreaded PerTronix plague. Miss could be from plug, plug wire going missing when at temperature, and/or lean on that particular cylinder from single port vacuum leak, cam lobe problem, valve sealing/closing issues. I've even seen the porcelain insulator on just one plug, break at the top of the jacket and fall down over the plug gap when the plug was in its in-engine position, then drop back down into proper position and OK when viewed up-side-down, outof the engine. This particular plug drove me bonkers for a few hours one day.
I have not yet heard one good thing about the Petronix unit. Whats up with that? You'd think they would improve it or go outta business.
1 good pertronix's story I am using a pertronix ignition and my car runs like a scaled dog. I had problems with the timing and degreeing of my cam, but once I got that straighten out it like a mule with no misses. However the accel superstock coil lasted me about 1 month, now I got autozone special, flame thrower is in the future. There is nothing wrong with pertronix's kits if you use the proper coil or coil resistor combinations. If some of these people knew how to use a voltmeter to measure there voltage and current to specs with the unit it would run fine. I spit at points there no good for perfomance build ,burn out to fast. IMO Julian:beer
OK, well...there is one diluded soul out there. Don't waste your money on the FerTronix Sputter-Thrower coils, they are dead stock points type copils, only they are aftermarket and not GM manufactured. They like resisted voltage as well, and will not make performance level spark. Stock GM points coil is still superior for a PerPopBangSputter unit. I agree with the Accel coil evaluation, but only since they are now made in Taiwan, same place the PerTroix coils are, they have been just plain not worth it to use. As far as the PerTronix being a performance ignition, it ain't. And, yeah, they need to run resisted, not full 12 volts.
soooo, what is the verdict? is it the petronix unit or relatedm to the cam not being degreed? the engine will run really rough at 4 degree initial and idle smoother as i turn the dist. i stopped at 35 degrees, scared to go any further. springs and weights appear to be working , checked the dist end play, pretty loose , gear seems to be okay although the wear pattern on it seems to run almost the length of the teeth, like its moving up and donw. related to the loose end play i suspect? coil checks out okay, wires okay, . dont have the old points dist anymore or i would stab that in and see what happens. thanks, brad.
brad make sure you don't need some washer between the distributor gear and shaft. Mine had some play but I put the washer it place it help alot. Also look into getting a recurving kit. I help my setup alot. Pertronix is not the best ignition MSD is but for us poor people that do not like to full with pionts is a miricle solutions. I pain 35 bucks for mine including the distributor that was already recurved fully off of ebay.
