<VV> Ignitor II update

[Bill Elliott]

Sure we're still friends Lon! And we both agree that the Pertronix is 
extremely reliable... that's why I defend it. I've installed a few dozen 
myself (less than 3000 though!)

And I don't mind you picking on me...because I'm one of the more vocal 
proponents that low voltage kills.  Over the past several years every 
time that someone mentioned how unreliable Ignitors are (and Corvair and 
non-Corvair lists), I ask them to tell me about their failure. (I've 
done this publicly on VV before... asking folks to tell me about every 
Ignitor failure they've seen themselves...not ones that they've just 
heard of.)

I came up with some interesting categories.

1. The very early Ignitors failed due to wire brittleness which was 
fixed pretty quickly.
2. Lots of people did not know that you could not leave the ignition on 
for long periods of time; several failures thought that was a likely cause.
3. They seem to have a high failure rate in race cars (could be a number 
of factors.)

4. and finally, the voltage. Of all of the Ignitor failures (not 
attributable to categories 1-3) that have been reported to me (or that I 
have seen) only two have been wired up to 12V (curiously, one of these 
was mine... in a TR6... maybe it was the Lucas Sport coil) with ALL of 
the others wired to a ballasted source.

Does this _prove_ the low voltage killed them? Absolutely not. And not 
knowing what percentage of all Ignitors were wired to 12V and to a 
ballasted voltage (and what coils each used), it's even hard to make a 
sweeping generalization.... except from the data I'm confident that 
Ignitors wired to 12V sources fail less often than those wired to 
ballasted sources. This is the evidence that suggests (but doesn't 
prove) the low voltage is a possible culprit.... in fact the most likely 
culprit given the data we have to go on.

Pertronix _does_ say in their specs that the Ignitor needs a minimum of 
8 volts to operate... but of course don't formally admit that low 
voltage will kill their units.

So until I get more evidence to change my position, I maintain two 
opinions...:

1. That the Ignitor is one of the most (if not the most) reliable 
inexpensive ignitions on the market for a Corvair.... and the Ignitor II 
fixes the major "flaw" in the original design (specifically  making it 
immune from damage of the ignition left on)

and

2. That it will likely perform better and live longer (in the real world 
where wiring systems are not always 100%) when wired to 12V vice a 
ballasted power source.

So it seems to me we both agree that the Ignitor is a great unit and 
that it runs just fine when hooked to 12V... we only disagree with how 
they run on lower voltage. Two out of three ain't bad! ;-)

Bill

corvairs wrote:

>    And this how we have so much impossible-to-kill-after-the-fact 
> misinformation about Corvair parts.  "virtually all Ignitor I failures 
> seem to be due to either abuse or undervoltage".  After selling 
> somewhere around 3000 of these, using them myself for nearly 20 years, 
> handling warrantees, customer complaints etc, I would say  that about 
> 5 out of every 100 come back for warranty issues. They turn out to be 
> roughly, 50%-nothing wrong with the unit, 40% abuse 10% unknown 
> causes. I canniot think of a single case where it was "proven" that 
> the unit failed becuase of low threshold voltage. That doesn't mean 
> that it can't happen, just that there is virtually no evidence that it 
> has happened.
>    The problem is, the supposed connection between Ignitor failures 
> and low voltage has been repeated numerous times in this community 
> even though these conclusions have all been based on assumption - not 
> any facts or actual testing or research. Each time it's repeated as a 
> fact it's reinforced as a fact. I'm not picking on you, Bill, because 
> lot's of people have innocently (and some not so innocently) done it 
> for years.
>
> Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.    Lon
>
> PS -Bill, are we still friends? These days I'm not sure about anyone!
>
> Bill Elliott wrote:
>
>> You and I will have to agree to disagree over wiring an Ignitor I to 
>> a ballasted source (virtually all Ignitor I failures seem to be due 
>> to either abuse or undervoltage)... but the Ignitor I clearly states 
>> (in all literature from the past several years anyway) that it is 
>> designed to be wired to 12V, NOT a ballasted source.
>>
>>
>
>


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