First of all, this isn't meant to be an MSD bashing post. Many, many people have had excellent results with MSD, I just haven't been one of them. I really don't want to go through my history of issues with it, suffice to say it's cost me a lot of time and money, and a friend of mine is an outstanding fabricator (see the post on the Charger 500, he did the restoration) who specializes in wiring, so I have some talent on my side.
I have, for a while, wanted to ditch the MSD and go back to points. I have a 68 Presolite dual point that I rebuilt and has been ready to go for a while, and finally installed it yesterday, ripping all the wiring out and putting a stock engine bay wiring harness in. I was finally prompted to do this as I happened to be browsing here not long ago when I saw a post where someone was asking about the best ignition system for his 383, and fully half the answers said points.
I was out the hobby for many years, so when I bought the road runner about 10 years ago, everyone said I had to put MSD in. It had an old Accel dual point distributor in when I bought it, the kind with the externally adjustable points. I didn't really see the point (pun intended) but wanted a rev limiter, and that was the only way, at the time, I knew to get one.
At one point, trying to diagnose the MSD issues, I put that Accel distributor in to eliminate the whole MSD system, and the engine ran at least as strong as it has ever run, and my neighbor/mechanic/mechaical engineer/racer swears it was as strong as he ever felt it. And I have no idea of the condition of the points in that distributor or how close the dwell is, I've never checked.
Anyway, putting probably 2k miles on the car a year, I have no issue at all cleaning and gapping the points once a year to have a much, much simpler system in. Spare points, condenser, ballast resistor in the glove box, and I'm set for failures.
Pertronix has a rev limiter with just 4 wire connections needed, and I already have those in the existing MSD harness in the car, so (as long as their unit works) all I need to do is make a connector for the wires from the Pertronix box to plug into the existing harness and I'm good to go.
It was probably in the low 50's here yesterday, and when I fired up the car, there was no discernible difference between firing it up cold with the MSD and with the points. I know it's just my imagination, but I swear it runs smoother and stronger with the points.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to "life of points with road runner".
Will post back when I get the rev limiter in, have a tach connection, and feel better about hammering it.
