VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1937-1945 Pertronix Ignition

As most of you know by now with my other post, I've been working on the engine a lot in my 1941 Chevrolet. It has a 216 and is completely orginal. I installed a 6 volt pertronix ignition system to make the ignition system somewhat more modern. When I'd start the car, it would idle just fine. However, when I'd race the motor, it would try to die. After a lot of trouble shooting, my dad and I decided to take the Pertronix out and reinstall the old points. The problem was cured. What we found was that the coil was not hot enough to provide enough juice to the Pertronix ignition system. The easy way to remedy this would be to install a new updated Pertronix coil. However, I wanted to use the original 6 volt coil with the ignition wire attachments. So, I'm back to using points.

For those of you interested in installing a Pertronix Ignition System in your old car, you must change to a new updated coil also to get the system to work.

Good info... Thanks for posting.

--Bill

Interesting, Brandon. Thanks for the info. Does Pertronix have a 6 volt coil that will do the job or does it require a 12 volt conversion to be happy?

FWIW, I ran a Pertronix kit on a '68 Comet (289 2V V/8 & 12 volts) for 7 years (40,000 mi) without missing a beat. I figured it must need plugs by then. (If it had been points and condensor, I would have replaced 'em 4 times by then.) When I pulled the plugs, I almost put 'em back in the heads. They were perfect! The Pertronix kit never gave a moment's problem. It was still running great when I sold the car about 10 years ago.

Did you get the engine problem solved? Hopefully it wasn't damaged to badly.

Pertronix does offer a 6 volt coil. It has the terminals all on the top so it is different than the original coil and also has no provision to use the electrolock.

I have heard two different stories for those units. One was that it improved performance of the engine and the other was a number of reports of them failing.

I had one of those units on my 1970 Impala. The Petronix lasted one week. It failed in heavy traffic on a Friday night at 5:00 PM right in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in town. Traffic was blocked big time! People were getting out of their cars to help us manually push the Impala to a parking lot to get it out of the way of the traffic. It was a nightmare! If the Impala still had its point system it would have been an easy fix! But, with the Petronix we had to tow the car miles to the mechanic shop that installed the thing.

I will never have another one of those units. The point system is almost fool proof and it is simple to work on and the points can be replaced along the side of the road if need be.

Points usually let you know when they are getting weary! They don't usually walk off the job.

Wawuzit,

I have not worked on the car anymore since the valve failure. What I have found though, is that the valves are still in the guides...which tells me I don't have cylinder damage. I'm going to pull the head and check the pistons for damage and am going to send the head back to the machine shot to repair and analyze what happened. As it appears, I dropped two valves. The machine shop assembled the head. I'm out of town for work for a while. I'll work on it when I get back. I'm just kinda taking a break from it for a little while.