I have an 1966 coupe (289) for a daily driver. When i bought it, it already had an Mallory Unilite distributor in it. I replaced the coil about 9-10 months ago for an flame thrower II.

Lately, my car dies randomly. No symptoms or what soever. Just dies like you turn off the ignition. My car drives on LPG cause overhere, gasoline is a lot more expensive then in the US. I had to rebuild the carb. to find out if it was the LPG installation or the normal fuelsystem. In both systems the car died while idling. So my guess is, it's the ignitionsystem. I replayed the ignitionswitch to start with, no luck, still dies.

I read on the net that the unilite are unreliable, even though i drove the car for a little over a year without any problems. I now know 9after a few phonecalls) that there should be an filter between the flamethrower and the unilite to prefend voltage spikes. Now i want something that is reliable. I was thinking about the pertronix ignitor II. How reliable is it now? Cause i've been reading old topics from '07-'08 saying they burn out often.

As i said when i bought the car, it already had the Mallory Unilite in it. It may be a stupid question, but i'll ask it anyway: Will the Pertronix Ignitor II fit in an Mallory Unlite?

 

does it happen in certain situations? sounds like you might just have loose wiring. you know a springloaded fuse or a cable that's occasionally touching ground. you might be replacing without reason ?!

 

Kalli,

I also checked the wiring, no lose/bad connections or damaged wires. Quite easy, because there is not a lot of wiring in these old cars.

 

true, but does it happen in certain situations?

 

It happened twice while driving aprox 20-30 mph, happened in 1 ride. 1 time on an roundabout and several times while idling. Eihter before an trafficlight, intersection or on the driveway. When the car dies, i can start the car immedialety. Just turn the key for a sec and it runs again (while driving first in N ofcourse) I don't need to turn the ignition off-on-start

Weather condition can be eliminated, dry or wet makes no difference. Also it doesn't happen on bad roads or speedbumps.

 

well for what it matters I currently run a pertronix II and quite happy with it. just had similar problems when new. the vacuum advance wasn't bolted tight, that caused the module to loose ground when overtaking and my ignition was gone as well but came back straight after. took me a while to find the problem, the loose vacuum canister gave it away in the end. other than that I don't have anything bad to say about it. (it's the billet flamethrower II distributor).
Oh and I have the one with the coil still seperate (stock look). Two of my buddies went with the HEI version (massive cap), and had both interference problems with the aircleaner.

 

It probably is the Unilite, they are sensitive to voltage spikes, which the recomended filter is supposed to help with, even so, I have IGNORED this on my 55 Lincoln, so far so good though.

IMO, for "simple reliability", easy to service, and incredibly cheap parts, an HEI is hard to beat if you can get past the look of the giant cap.

Also, an HEI delivers very impressive voltage (I think 60 KV, one of the reasons for the giant cap) which will be a help with LPG.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/MAA-8555101C/

 

Thanks for the replies.

Does anyone know if the pertronix ignitor module will fit in an mallory unilite distributor?