Pertronix Ignition Troubles

I had the rivet that secures the Pertronix to the plate work loose and of course coughed sputtered etc. and only had minimal tools onboard. ( What would MacGyver do?) Remove it from the dizzy  and beat on the rivet with a Phillips head screwdriver and a rock....must have been an interesting roadside sight but, it worked and got me home. In my tool bag I carry a complete dizzy with a mark for 30 degrees advance so it's install and go.

If you get an extra dizzy clamp and preset it you won't even need a mark....just a single 13mm nut.

I spent 8-10 hours reading about electronic ignitions before I decided to go with a F.A.S.T. (Formerly Crane) XR700, partially from all the stories on TheSamba just like yours. 

The one thing I learned? Carry a spare distributor all gapped and ready to drop in, which I plan to do with the Chinese 009 that came with my car, once I get the freshly rebuilt German 009 set up with the XR700 and installed. 

Also, last spring after finishing a bunch of mods, I got the bright idea, at 11:00pm after working on the car all day, that I wanted to fire it up. In my brain dead haste, I hooked the coil wires up backwards and fried my points and condenser. New parts in the next day, my cheapo digital multimeter said the coil was fine. After chasing what I believed was carburetor issues for two weeks, I checked the coil again with my Simpson 260 and found that the coil was horribly out of spec. New coil from F.A.S.T. and I was back in business. 

PS: That's a sweet looking road, Eric. Very reminiscent of Rockland County, NY where I lived for three years before I retired and moved back out west. I miss it. Sadly, I never got to drive my Spyder out there, but I put quite a few miles on my 968 during the summers. 

Pertronix igniters are known for failures. I ran one in Bridget for several years without an issue (and kept a full points/condenser disty under the seat just in case); others are not so lucky.

There's a Pertronix module in the Spyder's disty right now that seems to be good, but I plan to remove it fairly soon and lock out the advance.

Hoping the CB Performance Black Box paired with the locked 009 and points will be righteous; this setup will only get a spare points and condenser, and the spare coil already mounted next to the in-use one.