Phillip, First of all, please don't take anything I say personally. I can't support Pertronix...there's a philosophical disconnect about as wide as Texas between them and me.
Please understand a couple of things. One...any of these "projects" I do is not done for profit. I've said this before...hopefully people understand it. Take for example the improved (200,000 to 300,000 hour) condenser. By the time you total the cost of all parts and shipping cost, there's maybe something like a dollar profit left on each and for a couple of years I was happy to run the project at a loss because I knew for folks still using points distributors that condenser was necessary to prevent certain failure. No small bit of work and research went into it. Once breakeven point is reached, any profit goes into a "bucket" that is used to pay for future projects. None stays in my pocket. I've mentioned engine gaskets recently: I'm thinking of making those and offering them just to folks here but it requires the use of a CNC laser cutter and to make some engine gaskets I'm going to have to invest in a longer cutting table and also probably a drag knife style device and have some steel die rule cutters made. Expensive venture and very infrequent purchases from folks out there. The same exact challenge Fel-Pro, Mahle and others face. Gaskets like the side cover are simple punch cut gaskets but they're big and they gobble up a lot of gasket material that isn't exactly the same stuff that's used elsewhere. A lot of waste. Every week more of the individual gaskets are disappearing and when the vendors exhaust their current inventory, they'll be all gone. Fel-Pro has complete gasket sets still in stock and they have some individual ones like head gaskets, valve cover gaskets but most individual gaskets probably won't continue to be produced and are disappearing. I've considered buying some of the clone distributors and converting them, but I need to think about the outlay of $. Once again, infrequent purchases. I've also considered buying some GPS speedometers and converting those to "look-alike" AD speedometers (like I did for my pickup). Same problem. They aren't cheap to buy, folks don't purchase them often and you can't make one look exactly like original nor work that way (the odometer is different). And there is a good bit of work involved to make it a "drop in" product. The typical observer doesn't notice the difference at all. You can see it attached.
Two...I have no tolerance for companies who produce products they know (or should know) are going to fail. That is not good business and it isn't even fair, no matter what anyone says. The Pertronix module I took apart had maybe (if a person paid 100% retail prices for everything) $10 worth of "stuff" in it. It was sold for over $120. And it wasn't long before it failed completely. And I believe every single one of those has failed or will fail producing the same stranded results. I suspect the company realized this was a problem pretty quickly. The company should have said "we made a mistake." Every one of those should have been recalled with purchase price refunded. And those units are still being sold. You can see new unused ones on eBay, Etsy, elsewhere and the original poster with this question apparently has one that hasn't been used...yet.
~ Jon 1952 1/2 ton with 1959 235 | T5 with 3.07 rear end
