...to tell me what was going on with my car (68 289 AT)

Basically what's going on is the Pertronix Ignitor is burning up, he said smoke was coming from the distributor.

So he put a new one in and ran it for a bit, same thing. Somehow, the electronic ignition is burning up.

Not sure how this is possible. i was under the impression an electronic ignition (even a regular ole Ignitor) could handle anything you throw at it. I have a Flamethrower II coil which was getting around 13.5 volts last time we checked.

Any ideas?

 

_bump_

 

I realize 13.5 is normal running voltage , but 13.5 to the ignitor may be your problem. I recall the instructions state 12V, but who reads instructions? I'm running 9V to my Pert. coil, and 12V switched to my Pert. ignitor.

 

that was my only thought. that maybe 13.5V is a little much for the ignitor. but then again i was told it could handle it by several ppl

 

I know next to nothing about the Pertronix systems, but if you are supplying too much voltage to the coil, then the coil will supply too much voltage to the dizzy. The coil is a transformer that changes low voltage to high voltage. It is a multiplier. This is basically what the old points style ignitions did during cranking/starting by using the I terminal on the starter solenoid. The coil normally got resistance wire voltage (about 8-9V), but during starting/cranking, the I terminal gave the coil full voltage (about 12-14V) to provide a hotter spark. It sounds like the coil could be getting too much voltage for what the Pertronix can handle.


Edit:
After reading the very limited wiring instructions for the Pertronix, it appears that it does not care about the coil feed voltage as long as the pertronix red wire is seeing full voltage. Have you tried a different coil to see if it could be over volting the dizzy?

 

No, that's standard source voltage, it should handle it just fine. The only thing I can come up with is maybe something to do with your new coil. Everything was fine until you dropped that in.

Oh, and bah! @ your car for burning up my Pertronix :P

 

the mechanic said the same thing when i burned up the new one he put in to test it

 

It might be your distributor, mine was out of spec (it kind of wobbled I guess?) and it caused the pertronix to not work right. It didn't really "burn up" per say but it caused problems.

The only sucky thing is the mechanic that did this on my car didn't figure it out until after a full compression test and other things, which cost a lot of money

 

Not the distributor; we already swapped mine in, which is the 2nd of 3 he's burned up now. Unless the voltage regulator is bad and spiking more than 14V to the unit, I think it's gotta be the coil.

 

i feel honored. this guy owns a mint 66 2+2, several cougars and other coupes and i he has no clue whats wrong. when i was walking out he said "you know you could always drop a 347 crate in and forget about it...but alas he didn't wanna go halfzies on buying one.