Pertronix set up on a vintage Sun machine

Recommendations on a previous product of theirs. I dug around a bit and then picked up the phone and called them. They are quite knowledgeable.

 

With respect to all the NLA Marelli stuff you mentioned, it sounds like they should start making the stuff again or release the technical specs so that anyone can have this done. There are a lot of these distrributors out there.

I wonder how many of these cars run like sh*t because it's just too big a
pain to deal with the fix?

Bob S.

 

If the price of the two tubes of smallest size lube makes one pucker then the
price of everything else on these cars will positively make you turn inside out!

 

I should probably rephrase the term NLA… in reality the majority of this stuff was *never* available. Marelli didn’t make spares then and they’re not going to now. Things like bearings and breakers and the occasional o ring are relatively easy to come up with. The advance mechanism kits that Superformance carried(s) were a great idea but horribly executed. (Again, that may very well have changed by now… they’re not known for things like this. I buy quite a bit of stuff from them and am very happy 99.9% of the time.) It would be nice if the weights GT appears to have were well made. That would help tremendously.

In terms of technical specs, they’re all right there in front of us. Reverse engineering these things out to full blown drawings can be done in a matter of a few days. Resolving the original design flaws wouldn’t take much more. In short, they are very nice distributors that need a little help to be brought forward to today’s standards. I’m well on track towards resolving the majority of these items and plan to refine them on my own cars. If you’re going to bother making parts like this it’s just as easy to make 100 as it is 10. That said, sooner or later there will be parts available again.

Yes, I think the majority of the early cars that run these could use a bit of help. It’s not a pain to deal with the fix. It’s easy. The problem is you need someone that is familiar with Marelli’s and has a well tuned distributor machine. Then you have to be willing to *pay* that person for their knowledge and time spent. That’s the pain. I put a *silly* amount of time into each distributor I do. But I don’t know any other way to do it and am not willing to compromise the basic sense of craftsmanship that I apply to most everything I do. Folks with the 127’s have it much easier than those trying to get a pair of 159’s working properly. Points or Pertronix, it doesn’t really matter. This is why so many people move to more modern components such as crank triggers. By the time you’ve got a pair of 159’s in shape and back in the car you’ve likely spent the cost of an entire Electramotive setup. And you’re gonna have to spend that same money, if not more, the next time around. I can’t blame anyone for scrapping the stock stuff. Like I said earlier though, I just like my engine compartments to appear generally stock. Emphasis there on generally…

This is exactly why ideas like BirdMan’s repository are such a great thing for the community. Had you guys been able to just pop over to his site and find all this info in a nice and tidy pdf you probably would have been good ages ago. As much as we all like working on these things, it’s so much nicer to go flog them.

 

I think I remember what that's like.

 

Ok Rob, you've mentioned it twice now, who is the "birdman" and where is this site?

I think a lot of owners have simply let the dizzy go. That screwball pair of distributors with the 5 degree retard at idle design for the 308 certainly doesn't boost the desire for keeping the original stuff either. I have a friend that just went the Electromotive route on a QV. Not everyone is into original or even quasi original like us.

Bob S.

 

690 posts and you don't know who the BirdMan is? What rock did you just climb out from under?

Seek enlightenment here:

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=150316

You know, with all this yapping about these Marelli's I'm real tempted to go score one of the Electramotive rigs just to see what they're like. Probably a really bad idea though...

 

I know of four guys that have put them on.

Paul with a 308 QV injection & ignition for his track car. He's on this forum.
Steve, a.k.a. Fasterisbetter, also on this forum has recently put the ignition system on.

Then there's a guy on a Lambo forum who's done the injection & ignition system on his Espada. He's also got nitrous.

Another Espada owner has just the ignition system.

A number of people have done the ignition system on Countachs.

It's not Motec level stuff but it seems to work ok for these guys.
For my Espada the cost is about the price of a cap rotor and points if I were to buy the original equipment. I did not. I'm using Jag bits. But .... there is the work of fitting the sensor wheel and securely mounting the crank sensor.

On my engine this is not so easy unless you want to remove that sensor every time you change an AC or alternator pump. What I'm doing appears to be a lot easier (????) in some ways and harder in others. The performance results won't be as dramatic though. Hey, it's a vintage car not a 599. It will look very stock and not have a trigger wheel, six coil packs and a controller box on display in a late 60's engine compartment.

Bob S.

 

Thanks!

Exactly what I was thinking of.

 

Rob,

Now that I'm in the final assembly stage (sensors are mounted nicely) I have a couple of questions I'd like to run by you.

Bob S.

 

I will say I am using Optical, rather than Petronix, (and I have a lot of adjustment available in the position of the sensor) but the alignment should be the same. Mine wound up with the distributors about in the middle of the distributor base adjustment slots. This is of some consequence, because the rotor has to align with the pin on the underside of the distributor at the time of spark, and this relationship changes as the timing advances. I have mine setup so that the rotor is just a little PAST perfect alignment to the pin under the rotor. Then as the timing advances, the rotor and pin line up perfectly. Two ways to check this alignment 1) cut a hole in a distributor cap and shine a timing light in there, or 2) use some putty to make an impression of the rotor on the underside of the cap.
http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=136339632&postcount=279

 

The the distributors in question are off a Lamborghini and we have 42 teeth on the engagement gear to the cam drive so a lot of adjustment is available. In my case one tooth represents about 60% of the adjustment slot. This combined with a slotted mount should work fine. I'm also using a rotor with an extra wide contact area, over twice as wide as the original but I did align it about the same way as you based upon the original width of the contact so there's no way I can miss.

I'm looking forward to seeing the engine/car run again. It's been 7 months.

Bob S.

 

You'll be fine. Get that thing to Craig and in the machine already!

Thanks for the pics. I'm swamped right now but will get an email back to you in the morning.

R