pertronix ignitor help I have a 72 GS and I bought the pertronix ignitor kit and the flame thrower coil. Looking at the installation instructions it talks about a ballast resistor. Does my GS have that? I have no idea my car had an HEI adapted before but i took it off because it was eating the cam gear. My shop manual show a resistor wire but I am not so sure it is there. on the wiring diagram it show a pink wire from the coil to some point where it turns into a white/orange/purpple wire that ends up at the firewall wire connector. from the firewall connector it turns back into a pink wire that goes to the ignition switch. Beware that I havent even attempted to install this due to the bad weather in this area. any takers? ou:
Assuming your '72 GM car started life with point distributor, your car started life with a resistor wire. These wires have a white knit fabric (probably asbestos) covering on them where one normally sees plastic insulation; I vaguely recall that the wire has some stripes (orange and/or purple??) on it. The resistor wire substitutes as a ballast resistor. Ballast resistors keep the points from burning up by cutting down the voltage to around 9 volts, I believe. This wire was probably, if not necessarily, removed for the previous HEI conversion. I beleive your pertronix instructions will indicate no need for ballast resistance. I've been running Pertronix trouble free for years now. However, a bunch of our guys have had substantial trouble with them. Follow directions closely. Assuming you are using an old points distributor be sure to shim it carefully to eliminate most (but not all) vertical movement of the shaft. I'm surprised more folks don't run the Crane Cams optical trigger in their distributors. My brother has one of these in his TR6 and it really seems to be a great solution. Good luck.
The resistor wire can be found by opening up the plastic harness that runs on the intake/valvecover. Look for a whiteish/tanish braided cloth covered wire. It'll end in a section of electrical tape to which you'll see a Pink and Yellow wire exit the tape. That cloth covered wire is the resistor wire, it runs back to the fusebox (engine side). If you have this wire, just use the stock pink wire that exits to the coil. If you don't, then it was probably changed over to a standard wire with 12v for the HEI. You don't 'have' to run the resistor wire with Pertronix, but you should. Which Ignitor did you get?
got it in well the pertronix works good, I can see where someone who thinks they know what they are doing can screw this up. the shimming is crucial, and once you got it it works real good.:blast:
