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Cut-n-paste about problems with newer MP distributor
The whole story is in the Feb '14 Mopar Action.

I just read the Mopar Action article. I've used the newer MP distributor in the past and it worked in my application but both the mechanical advance and vacuum advance were disabled. The distributor was locked out. Based on that I can't comment on the spark scatter issue from a personal perspective but i have seen some erratic timing on other car's i've helped to tune. It can be frustrating swapping out springs and resetting/adjusting mechanical advance with marginal results. :P

The MA article does make mention of the FireCore billet distributors and upon testing they found that timing was rock solid with the Firecore unit. Ehrenberg even summerizes the article by saying ; your best option is to find an old 73 distributor and rebuild/modify it or purchase the FireCore unit. More or less of what i've been telling members for the past few years ; Firecore is a top shelf product and i wouldn't be recommending it to my friends if it wasn't.

As for the ECU's ; there is a member on Moparts who has been doing a fair bit of dyno testing on the replacement style ECU's and the only ones he likes are the rev-n-ator and FBO box. All the other chinese knockoffs pull timing and higher rpm and loose power at peak volumetric efficiency which is when the greatest demand on the ignition system occurs.

Mopar performance is out of the electronic conversion market at this point which isn't necessarily a bad thing based on recent reports.

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I must comment on this subject. First of all here are my disclamers: I do not write articles for any Mopar rag and I do not have a dyno machine. In fact my engines have never been on a dyno as I use the track as my test.

I switched from the Mopar dizzy to a Firecore when they first came out and was impressed with the piece and the steady timing. Did it improve mt ET on the track? Not at all. So after running it for a while in a high 9 sec car I started having issues when I towed to a race in St. Louis and I live in Ohio. Was going some rounds and then the engine started breaking up and getting worse with each run and I could not find the problem at the track so packed it in and towed it home to diagnose the issue. After looking at valve springs and many other things I noticed the distributor screws on the side of the base were loose??? I tried to tighten them to no avail so I take the thing apart and find that the plastic mounts for the weights are worn and cracked and the weights are flying around in the distributor Not good on an expensive race engine so I get in touch with Rick and he swaps it out for a new one he said there were a couple issues but that was resolved. So in goes the new and improved one and only into my 3rd race and the same thing starts happening again. First thing I checked is the distributor!! Bingo - same issue. So in my application of using the Firecore for race only it is no longer an option for me. I cannot risk the expense of the engine to a distributor so I went back to the Mopar one and problem solved. In fact I will be upgrading to a crank trigger now anyway. I also know personally of 3 others that have had the exact same issue and if they want to add to this then they can as I will not mention their names.

In the end the Firecore may be good for some but for me it is a no go and will never have another on any of my cars.

Russ

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Here goes again.....As many have said before me, and I rely on their veracity, unless your distributor is completely worn out the Pertronix conversion is a slam dunk. But don't expect it to make a difference in how the car runs. You may "feel" a difference, but I remind you that in at least 30% of the population, the placebo effect works.

Now, what will make a difference is getting your advance curve right.

Here I go a little off topic. I divide the automotive world into "weekend drivers" and "weekend racers". Blazin' Bob is a weekend racer. As such, he knows how to recurve a distributor, and the benefits from that. A weekend driver won't generally know how or why to recurve a distributor.

That is why I cringe every time a weekend racer tells a weekend driver to buy a stock rebuilt distributor and put a Pertronix kit in it. The weekend driver, not knowing how or why, will probably not recurve the stock distributor with its lazy curve. On the other hand, if the weekend driver buys a distributor with a high performance curve and stabs it in, the results will be much better. At this point the weekend driver says, "Wow, changing from points to breakerless ignition really woke the car up!" Weekend racers will understand that it was the better curve that woke the car up.

Properly-set-up points type ignitions, especially those triggering an electronic box, will support a very high performance engine. What one gains from the breakerless conversion is repeatability, rpm, and freedom from wear effects.

R.

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nicely put and where have you been all my life!