I have used two of these and one has failed at about 200 mile. It was about a year and a half old. The reason I'm posting this is because I want to know if it was a freak thing or if there really is a problem with these. If there is a problem, I will take the other one out of my Dads car.

The only time my car had to be towed, was because this part failed. I had the points in the trunk for back up but took them out after a year thinking the ignition was reliable. I hope it was a freak thing, I really liked how it ran when it was installed.

 

I have had my pertronix igniter since july 2002. No problems after 3,000 miles.

 

More than 5 of us have these, lets see some voting.....

 

my uncle has had 3 cars that have had it mess up on.i would rather have points.

 

I've run the Pertronix ignitor (Version 1) since it came to market some time in the 90's. I'm still running the same unit, and it's performed flawlessly. I wonder if you don't have some wiring issue that's burning them out prematurely?

 

Mine works great but I do carry the points, just in case.

 

i had it on y 66 coupe with a 200 straight six....it wsant even firing..so we went back to the poings...hope this helps!

 

I've had an Ignitor and coil on my 66 for 5 years, with about 5000 miles, and have never had a problem. I realize it could fail tomorrow, but so could points. If you've had consistent trouble, then (no offense) it's probably not the ignitor.

 

I've got one on my '66 coupe also, which I don't know who or when it was put on, but it fires up every time (except now I've got a fuel prob.). Its paired with an MSD 6al and a Crane coil, so i might take it out sometime and just go with a factory electronic distributor and MSD coil.

 

Same here---mine has Version 1 since around 1996 , no problems.

 

mine was terribly susceptible to heat-soak issues. Punted it and went Duraspark/MSD, never looked back

 

I've had zero issues since putting it in and I even had parts left over because I did what they said I couldn't which was to use a non ford distributor with it. I had to fab most of it and it works way better then my old dual point system ever did.

These things are picky though, you have to get the right unit for vaccum advance vs. mechanical advance which many folks do not realize and from what I heard if you peel the black sticker off the back the whole unit will fail. An improper coil or fusable link can also make it fail but when properly installed it is probably 95% effective in almost any case.

 

I followed their instructions to the letter. I even installed their coil at the same time. Wiring looks good and voltages are what they should be. I have had no more problems after putting back in the points.
Pakrat is probably right with a 95% rate (even though the current poll rate is at 83.33). Still 95% isn't a good enough reliability rate for me. I think I'll yank it out of my Dads car.

 

I ran a Pertronix for five years on my '65 coupe until I sold it. Then put one in the '69 fastback that replaced the '65 and ran it for 10 years until I sold that car. There's one in place on the rebuilt 302 in my garage that's going into my '67 coupe restoration (one of these days!) Never had a stutter from them, much less a failure. You might say I'm sold on it and wouldn't use anything else!

 

The voting part of this thread is gone but I would still like to hear how people feel about these.

 

I have them on my '69 Cyclone and '65 Fastback...and I have installed them in quite a few customers cars over the years and I have never had a failure yet....I'll never go back to points