sweet. Thanks for the advice. I havent tried jetting down the mains since I put the 58's in I'll have to try it out.
I've been reading through all the p-tron threads as well as the gold box threads and, although you say their good ign systems when everythings up to par, everyone still upgrades to the p-tron. Is the p-tron worth the money to upgrade even if the gb is still working.
There are two potential failure points for the gold box system. One is the firewall-mounted module itself. Those fail primarily due to their mounting location...worst possible location on the entire vehicle (other than right on top of the exhaust manifold).
The other is the hall effect pickup (electronic trigger) inside the distributor. However, an inop trigger is extremely rare in actual use.
Replacement gold box modules are available from many sources including ihon, no big deal.
However, when someone experiences a failure of the module, one additional solution is to convert the distributor to a p-tron trigger. But those do cost considerably more at retail than a replacement gold box! And...guess what...the p-tron is a hall effect sensor also!!...though it does not need/use the gold box module to function. In fact it cannot be used with the oem gold box module.
In the big picture regarding inductive ignition systems (as opposed to a real upgrade which involves incorporating a capacitive discharge unit such as msd 6, crane 6, mallory 6, etc.), there is no advantage to installing a p-tron over simply replacing the gold box if it fails.
The reason why some folks experience an "increase" in perceived performance when using the p-tron is normally associated with the fact that the distributor is overhauled at the same time which involves correcting the endplay for enhancing timing control. Also, by cleaning up the mechanical advance and verifying that the vacuum advance is functional (also a problem area of failure), original distributor performance is restored. It is not because the p-tron module worked some kind of magic!
When you look at the two systems run on the same engine (with the same coil) on an oscilloscope, you will see there is no difference in dwell/coil saturation, or secondary coil output (measured in kilovolts). But if the distributor is properly serviced and brought back into spec, there is an enhancement to dwell variation (coil saturation), and ignition timing is far more stable across the rpm range due to the tightened-up endplay. That is manifested in restored distributor performance which has significantly deteriorated over time (30+ years and hundreds of thousands of miles).
