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The mystery problem was the broken magnetic ring for the Pertronix
 
Ignition issues PDF Print E-mail
Written by Steve Kupper   
Sunday, 20 September 2009
As some of you might have heard about 2 weeks prior to the Nationals and right after the head was rebuilt, the car started to misfire badly.  I found the misfire of cylinder #1 and thought it was due to a leaking gasket that is on the water neck and the first intake.  After fixing that, the misfire did not go away.  And what i discovered is that the misfire was on cylinders #1 and #3.

 Aftertrying manythings i still did not know if the problem was the ignition or the fuel.  The spark was on all 4 plugs, but pulling #1 or #3 wire would have no effect on the motor and either of the other two would kill the engine.  I guess running on 1 cylinder does not really work for an m10.  I went to friend's place, BTM Motorwerks to borrow a leak down tester, smoker to find the vacuum leaks, and he threw in a little spark tester. Looks like a pen with a U Chanel on the end.

It's cheap, i am getting me one of these. So i get home, start the car, get the tester unto the plug wires and i see the miss. Not consistent, but always on #1 and #3. Well, now I know it's the spark. Time to inspect all involved parts. I open the distributor, shake the Pertronix Ignitor to see if it is loose, pull the rotor, and cap and they look good, pull the magnetic ring and it falls apart in my hands. The two halves separated and the magnets are loose.
Collect all parts of it, put it all together, installed with the rest of the parts and started the car. Interesting observation is that the miss now moved to #1 and #2. The the problem rotated 90 degrees on the distributor. I pulled it out again. looked at it, installed and the miss is back to #1 and #3. So my guess was that i found the problem. Of course i need another ring to test.

Daniel let me borrow his Ignitor, i just installed the rind, gapped it and no more miss. I can pull any plug and get the same result, a small drop in RPMs. So a leeson here is, get the proper tool for the job and carry a spare ignitor :)

Thanks Brat and Ralf at BTM Motorwerks for the tools and Daniel Echeverri from Habana-Cuba for the spare Pertronix Ignitor!

 
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