I have the Pertronix II and the flamethrower coil in my tach test setup, and I
just received (on Friday) some 0.15 ohm current-sensing resistors that I'll be
wiring in parallel to make a resistor suitable for testing the coil current
drawn
by this arrangement. With three of these resistors in parallel, the resistance
is
less than 10% of the claimed resistance of the Flamethrower coil, and therefore
they won't affect the current readings by very much (and if anything, it's a
known amount that I can factor out if required).
Steve, if the wiring is getting hot, then something is wrong, and since hot
wires
lead to dash fires, you'd better find out what. From the limited testing I've
done on this setup, you can STILL stall the distributor in the 'wrong' spot and
cause the coil current to stay on, which would definitely overheat things in
short order, but as I understand your description, you're getting hot wires
while
running the car on the road. Take your ammeter (or any ammeter) and wire it in
series with the white coil wire (doesn't matter which side of the tach), then
see
how much current is being drawn by just the ignition system. Remember that this
reading represents the average of the coil current, so it will probably change
with RPM, since it's dependent on the 'dwell' produced by the Pertronix unit.
I need to confirm the distributor stall thing - i'll let you all know what I
find
out, but I would agree with Pertronix on their stuff not being the cause of your
intermittent operation problem. To me it sounds like you've got a short
somewhere
in the ignition wiring that causes excessive current draw and occasionally
grounds right out, causing the car to momentarily stall.
Regards,
Theo
Steve Sage wrote:
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