buick; Have you ever installed a special-order Pertronix unit (oddball application) on a farmer/customer's grain truck (carefully and properly installed with the correct new coil and new wires) only to have it inexplicably fail the first or second day of harvest AND having to tell him the truck would be down for 2 weeks or more while a replacement could be ordered in? Well; I did just that last fall; and there were words used other than "Luddite". (The truck was a Ford 7000 with factory EI. A cab fire had destroyed the wiring for the original EI and the special-order Pertronix unit was chosen to simply replace the messed up OEM system with a system needing just a power wire to the coil. Therefore going back to the original system or to points were not readily feasible options when the Pertronix unit failed.) I am not saying that the units are BAD; no matter what the product there's always a bad one now and then. What SUCKS is getting a replacement quickly for the less-common units SHOULD there be an "issue". If the unit is not a common one you are SCREWED until a replacement unit finds it's way through "channels". The company apparently doesn't believe in having "spares" for some of it's less common systems at locations around the country and you WAIT for the part from the factory. Needless to say the truck has been running well ever since with an ALTERNATIVE EI system. (We have installed LOTS of Pertronix units over the years with only a couple of failures; but that one sure "left a bad taste in my mouth"!)
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