At the Mitty, my newly restored TR4A had a new Accel 300 ignition setup
with matching coil in it. It was triggered by a Mallory dual point with just
one set of points as it was used as a trigger only (it even worked with out
a condenser). On Sunday morning, the car would not start. The starter turned
great but no fire. We hooked a small lawn mower battery (used for my timing
light) to the ignition and it started fine. We determined the alternator
died some time Saturday. The battery had lots of power but would not fire
the ignition. We swapped with my street MGB (225 horses in a V-8 so don't
diss a MGB) and both cars fired fine. The race car ran the race with no
further problems. But it is proof that these aftermarket systems do seem to
require a lot of power to operate correctly and do not tolerate a voltage
drop. I now believe this was the miss we detected Saturday afternoon. A
battery loosing power. I now have part number 562 from Mallory that converts
the distributor to electronic and a rebuilt alternator. If I get any more
problems, I may go back to a simple point type system. We used to run Lucas
distributors up to 7,000 with no problems in the past. This may be the tip I
needed to solve my miss. Thanks. Barry
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