Message text written by "Kai M. Radicke"
>Well first of all, when I purchased my Ignitor in Feb of 1999 and
installed
>it I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out why the car wasn't
>running well. It eventually was found that the Ignitor's magnetic collar
>only had four working magnets in it! I call to Pertronix and they
promptly
>sent out a replacement collar. Tuned the car since then, and it was
>alright... but there have been times with the mysterious misses at highway
>speeds. And I know when I was running points and condensor from purchase
>of the car in Dec of 1998, until Feb of 1999 I had no problems... even
though
>this was in the depths of the PA winter.
The Crane unit comes with about six interupter wheels to cover any and all
four, six and eight cylinder applications. But even when you make things
fool proof they make a better fool. I heard of a case where a TR6 owner
had a Crane profesionally installed and the lads put in a four slot
interupter.
>I just am not happy with it, and for the $95 retail price I can think of
no
>reason to do away with the points and condensor. I haven't seen any
>improvement from it, and it seems many people's professional opinions of
the
>unit isn't that great.
The Crane is about the same price and provides no performance improvements
but I have experienced, nor have I heard of any low voltage problems. In
fact, most report improved cold starting. And there is the advantage of
"set it once and forget it."
>I know it is extremely sensitive to low voltage situatiions. Also in
1999,
>my alternator decided to stop producing electric, slowly draining the
>battery. The pertronix was not happy with this, until I rectified the
issue
>with a new battery. The old battery still had plenty of power to initiate
>the starter and turn the motor over, but the Pertronix just refused to
cope.
>At this point the battery was still reading in the region of 11.5 volts,
as
>compared to a healthy fully charged battery in the mid 12s and low 13s.
<snip>
>Cheers,
>Kai M. Radicke<
The advantages of the pertronix over the Crane are:
1) it all fits in the distributor. If appearances are important the
pertronix has no finned electronic module to clutter the engine bay. On
the other hand one can always locate the Crane module out of sight. You'll
be hard pressed to find the Crane module on my TR8 (but then there is so
much clutter under there that's not all that hard.)
2) the magnetic pick up is less sensitive to dirt. But then one can clean
the optical pick up (used by Crane) with a little alcohol and, unless the
conditions are extreme, this doesn't have to be done very frequently. I've
run a Crane on my TR6 for 3 or 4 years without problem one.
I can't comment on the MSD, I know nothing.
Dave
|