Great info Alan! Are there no LED conversions for 009 ? I have
an 86 vanagon form Germany that has a factory 2 barrel carb.
The dist. looks just like a f.i. vanagon but has vac. and mech.
advance in it . Are the vanagon dist. LED or magnetic ?
Hans,
Pehaps someone can shed some light on vanagons. I'm not familar with 86 Vanagons. More than likely it'd be a magnetic pickup. In your vehicle I dont think you'll have any benfit going LED.
I'm not slamming magnetic pickups since I have a pertronix in my 050 dist in my engine right now. I was just responding to James question. The magnetic pickups work well but its at extreme high rpms that I comment on quality of spark signal to coil or CDI box. For the most part I think magnetic pickups do a good job (not excellent)for general purposes. I personally wouldn't go from one magnetic pickup to another MSD magnetic pickup. Maybe the MSD magnetic P/U does a better job than pertronix but it still works on the priciples of negative pulses from a magnetic field. I'd say LIGHT is a fast form of information dontcha think?
Then the LED pickup is the last device that triggers the coil to spark. I'd say propigation delay(electronic devices, chips etc) of what 6-10 nanoseconds sounds pretty fast to me? and to top it of its precise regarless of RPM of the engine.
I'd say pertronix has their issues but its probably one of the better ones out there for aftermarket electronic ignition. Some LED aftermarkets have proven to be a POS and not super reliable.
If the intention of UPGRADING is the main reason LED is an upgrade. Cross fire in distributor caps always makes me think of how badly a car is in tune. The shear size of the MSD dist cap (hmm what 4 cyl tempo??) will prevent potential of crossfire but I think if you do proper maintenance you wont have any problems with any \"stock\" distributor. Your only getting around/aprox 7-12 KV of spark energy in there anyways so its not a tremendous amount of energy. BUT if your terminals in the distributor cap is corroded and the gap of the rotor and inside terminals of the distributor cap are large that creates more KV energy with a larger gap(sound good but its not). This is what creates more potential of cross fire. Thats why proper tuneups are very important.