The HEI distributor is very large in the front of the SBF and severely limits the choice of air cleaner. That is what I don't like about it. I have the Pertronix on a 65hp v4 concrete saw. It has run for years without issue. If you want a mix of performance and economy, you can run a Ford Duraspark distributor with any MSD box, rather than the stock box. I did that for several years on a 302. Good luck Dave
An "hour"?? You're good, kid. Took 4 hours to wire mine up. The brain-box istself was $25 and the distributor was something like $45. Bought a new coil for it too. Don't remember how much that was but probably $23 or so. It works great, but I want to get rid of the seperate coil and clean things up. HEI is not bad, and has been improved over the years. It's also easy to find parts for in an emergency. I would never go back to points. Talk about something that sucks...
I made my wireing harness in 15 minutes. Cut 3 wires the same length and one twice as long. Crimp on some ends and tape it together. Drop in the distributor, mount the module, hook up the 3 connectors on either end of the harness and one wire to the coil and your running. Dosen't take long at all. I gave $25 for my distributor at a junk yard. Has 25,000 miles on it. Gave $5 for an almost new module and spark plug wires. The car had been tuned up right before someone junked it.
I converted a 71 Torino to Duraspark when I was a kid. Took me about 4 hours to figure it out. I wouldn't have an issue today, hooking a MSD box to a Duraspark distributor... However I wouldn't know where to start wiring the factory box. Also, is there not a resistor wire between the key switch and the distributor? I think that has to be bypassed to do the swap correctly. Otherwise your box is not getting full voltage. Correct me if I am wrong... Dave
i hate points as well, but my pickup has the mallory dist in it. was halfway home when it went out. lost a day looking at parts shops trying to get a replacement unilite unit and it cost almost 100 bucks. if the grabbers pertronix kit ever goes out i know it will take me all of an hour at most to get it running and get home. im considering putting a stock dist back in my truck and getting the pertronix kit for it too.
I replaced the DuraSpark in my Mav with a new stock distributer and pertronix. Four years and no problems.
I have pertronixs in my 72, had it in my 73 and also in my 70 f100.. easy to install, took about 7 minutes or so, fits in your old distributor, easy 2 wire hook up (red wire to hot post of coil, black wire to negative post of coil, no extra boxes to hang in the engine bay, no extra masses of wires to hook up ) you will need to run a hotter coil...there are 2 different kits, get the original pertronixs ignitor, not the no. 2 kit. Its very neat and clean and fits right where the points used to and can be changed back to points with minimal effort...my $.02...Jim Mine cost $79.00 at Tenn Motorsports.
Damn you guys are slow. It's 4 wires, they are color coded. Not sure why it takes so long to figgure out how to hook a black wire to a black wire and a orange wire to an orange wire and a purple wire to a purple wire. Green goes to the coil, red goes to a switched power source. White is optional and can just leave it unhooked. I actually have the white wire hooked to the wire the windshield washer used to hook to. If my car is hard of starting or giving me problems, I can push in the windsheild wiper knob and retard my igntion timeing automatically. You do not have to bypass the resistor. I'm running a TFI coil on mine under the original resistor wire and have not had a problem. Here is what my setup looks like. This is when I was still running the stock points coil. I now have a TFI coil mounted on the shock tower. Also threw in a couple of pics of the harness I tossed together. I have never used the windsheild washer and the pump didn't even work so I did away with it. I like to keep it simple. Hardest part of it was getting the distributor to drop in but with the help of the guys on here I figgured out I just needed to turn the oil pump shaft a little.
