I started to make the custom reluctors to fix a problem that I had with the stroker motor in my car.

What happened with that motor was that when the vacuum advance was activated the rotor phasing would get far enough out of whack that the spark would start jumping to the wrong post and I'd get a severe misfire.

I chased my tail for a long time until I figured out how to test for this condition. Basically I just set the motor at a fast idle and then used a Mityvac to pull a vacuum on the advance canister. As soon as I reached a decent amount of vacuum advance the motor would start to misfire.

To fix it I remachined the reluctor so that the initial rotor phasing was to one side of the post and full vacuum adavance put me on the other side of the post. Basically I just split the difference. That solved the issue and the misfire condition went away.

I then started to sell the remachined reluctors but eventually the supply for them dried up and I got tired of how much work it took to make them. I also got tired of how little people were willing to pay for them and all the experts who told me that they weren't needed so I just stopped selling them.

I still think the re-machined reluctor is an easy solution to a specific problem. I'm not sure why some distributors have the issue and others don't but I do know I've run into the problem before and that it was severe enough to cause significant misfiring.