AMC Eagle

[MadMan]

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.

I love how you swooped in an proved my point. Another reason newer systems are more robust is simply down to delicate electronics being very old technology now. It's very well-understood and failure points have been learned by now. Manufacturing defects have been ironed out. High quality parts are widely available and cheap now. Etc, etc.

[MIPS]

It's still neat to hear from the other side. I already knew that equivalent systems are still not permitted in most aircraft due to the fact that points will gradually fail while an electronic ignition will instantly fail. Personally myself I've yet to seen one fail (mind you, I'm currently using my only one) so sometimes experience counts.