Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric H
Old Mechanic here, Points usually didn't abruptly leave you stranded miles from anywhere, Electronic Ignition did that twice to me. One was a GM HEI that I had retrofitted into my 68 Nova 6 cyl, the other was an 87 Toyota Pickup, died on the 10 Freeway in heavy traffic while passing.
I used to see a lot of those Ford modules fail back in the 80's, the 90's distributor mounted modules also had a horribly high failure rate. I wouldn't go anywhere with an early Electronic system unless I had a spare module and the tools to change it.
Newer systems are much more robust and redundant, one driver per coil on the newest systems with individual coils, of course the Crank Sensor could fail, but that seems to be a very rare event.
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My last Ford, an '88 4 banger Mustang, left me stranded when the TFI module on the distributor took a dump. Between that, rust, and several other problems it had, I sent it to the boneyard.
I think the ignition module was on it's last legs in my '91 Ranger when it went to the boneyard due to rust. It was one that was a 4 banger but had 8 spark plugs. Sometimes the tach would start reading half the RPMs it was actually turning. I never checked, but I suspect half of the plugs quit firing at the same time. Shutting the ignition off and turning it back on always caused it to go back to normal.
The only other ignition failure I've had was a coil pack on a POS VW Jetta. That whole car was one giant failure, though.
I would never even consider trading modern electronic ignition for points, though.
