[Healeys] pertronix failure

[John Vrugtman]

I thought I would share an interesting experience with a pertronix 
ignitor yesterday.  The car, with a BJ8 engine, had been running for 
years with the ignitor with no problems at all, when suddenly on a trip 
of less than 100 miles it just quit.  Other than determining it had no 
spark, we could not find anything wrong on the side of the road, even 
after replacing the coil, the ignitor module, rotor, cap and wires and 
disconnecting all other wires from the coil.  Towed it home and resumed 
checking, but still found nothing; then just for grins removed the 
magnet cap that triggers the ignitor and low and behold there at the 
base of the cam were all six magnets.  The holding sleeve had come 
unglued letting the magnets fall out.  One other thing, we replaced them 
and re glued the sleeve, but the car would only run on 3 cylinders.  
Found out from Pertronix that the magnets have to be aligned by polarity 
to work properly.  The point learned for me is we overlooked the magnet 
cap because everyone knows magnets don't go bad.

John