The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop 57 3100 V8 283 Rochester 2 barrel stumbles warm

Just an update. I got my new Pertronix flamethrower coil and 71181 - Pertronix Ignitor III installed.

Almost easy. They say no modification required. But you have to route the wires out somehow. They show you having a hole in the bottom of the distributor that you stick a gromet in and wires thru. I did not have that. Not that I could see anyways. And I did not want to drill one in there so I bought a cheap distributer cap and drilled a hole in the lower side of it and ran it out there. I am hoping the distributor cap does no crack as a result. I may have to do a hole in the distributor if it does.

The old Pertronix had the wires positioned where you could go right out the corner of the sliding door in the front. But the new one has the wires coming off the far back end of the device. YOu choice is to go out the rear drivers side of the cap (closest exit if you drill a hole) or loop it around the inside of the cap and go out the vacuum slot but that worried me that it would get caught up in the mechanical advance or rotor.

Anyways I got it in there. Started it right up. had to retime it as it had moved from 10 degrees to negative 4 with the swap of the parts. This one is lope sensing and has a rev limiter and built in resister.

So I retimed it to 10 or 12. Can't reember now. Book says 4 BTDC in specs and 8 BUDC in page about timing.

Along the way I noted that the coil wire on the coil side was pretty loose. THe rubber cap was really tight on it but the metal connection was loose. So maybe that was part of it.

I bent the tangs out a bit and stuck it in and assured a tighter fit. I have another set of wires to put on later but I was trying to see what was the cause of the issue one thing at a time.


ANother note. The installation instructions tells you to remove the 3-4 inch white resister on the firewall that has the connections from the ignition key on one side and the wire to the coil on the other. They say to splice all the wires together and throw out the resister. They say you may have a resister or a resister wire but to remove either one.

When I tried that by just puting all the wires on one end of the resister(I was lazy) it would not run. It would start with the key in start position but as soon as I released the key to ON it would stall out every time immediately. I tried about 10 times. No go.

Then I put the resister back in place (put the wires in the old positions) and it started right up and ran fine.

So I think something is different. THis does not work like they said. They said the igniter would service that function of the resistor for starting and for best performance to remove the resister. But for me it seems to need the resister. Any ideas?



So the real test....off the to dump.
Did ok all the way there but that is normal. Then it heats up siting to pay at the both and then I turn it off and open hood while unloading.

Once we are ready to go I close hood and pray. Typically it is hard starting then. Usually no gar pedal is best at that point and have to try a few times it catches stumbles and runs smmooth. This time it just started up smooth! GOOD sign.

Then we got it out on the road and it accelerated smoothly in the gears. Normally with the problem it would not take gas and you had to really eas into it or it would stumble all over.

SO it appears to be fixed!

It does have a minor stumble if I am going 20-30 in 3rd and floor it. I think that is just it not being able to take all the pumped gas as the engine can not turn over that fast.

It also had a couple minor stumbles while accelerating hard but it accellerated a and was pretty smooth. I think the rest of this is just getting the timing correct.

It has never run this good since back when I had points in it. But they were a pain as they would pit and corroad and get wet as I do not use the truck often enough.

So it appears that the new Pertronix Igniter or Coil or coil wire was the issue.

I do not think it was the wire as when it would not start I had spark to the plugs. But it is hard to say. The old pertronix was prone to having issues with the need to gap betwwen a magnetic ring and a sensor. The new one has no ring or any gapping. It just senses the lobe. So it does not matter that the distributor rides up as it gets hot or as you accelerate hard. The new one still just sense the lobe. The old one would have issues with the gap widening.

I like it so far.