Dealbreaker74
Member
Looking at this thread, I thought I should add my two cents.
Over the past 30-some years, my '74 has has been through at least 10 "ghost boxes," (not all new...I would grab them off wrecks when you could still find them at pick-a-part), and at least as many carbs/carb rebuilds. When I had a gold box that was actually working, I spent my time chasing carb stumbles and misses. I changed plugs, wires, ignition switches. Soup to nuts, if there was a component involved in fuel or spark, I messed with it. I was never satisfied. I knew the truck should run better!
In 1999, after the last in a long line gold boxes slowly failed (not unlike the ones described in the thread), I decided I had had enough. I dug out a points distributor, began to clean it up thinking this was going to be the way to go. During that time, I read about pertronix. I thought this was a cool product, and I also thought I could just pop one in the electronic distributor. Unfortunately, they weren't offering one yet, so I went back to the points unit, and retro'd that instead. Thinking I was onto something good, I then plunked down on a jacobs mileagemaster ignition box (some is good, more is better right?). I chose jacobs because a friend had bad luck w/msd customer service (turned out to be his own fault), and like IH philosophy, its something different. Mind you, the thing has not run on the new distributor yet. Not even on points. What was I thinking???
In a nut shell, I got lucky. Real lucky. Not because the gear was so-so (it wasn't-far from it). More because of my shotgun approach to solving the problem. This kind of multi-front approach usually loses battles. But in this case, the bottom line was success.
All I can say is this was by far the most significant performance enhancement I have ever made to the truck. Even rebuilding the engine did not bring this much satisfaction. The truck is a 345 w/t-18 close, 3.73s, 33" tires. Your run of the mill weekend trail rig. Mostly street miles, nothing spectacular. But try to 2nd gear a stop sign, and it would miss, stumble, buck, snort, fart its way up to speed. I would usually save the situation by grabbing clutch, giving it more coal, and trying again. But those days are long gone. I can dump the clutch at idle (in 2nd), watch the revs go down to 400, and just smoothly rumble away. I can get into street traffic without passing 1200 rpms. The thing behaves like a diesel. An absolute stump puller. Torque is really cool! I make excuses to drive it whenever I can now. All I can think of is that low revs presented a tough ignition condition. And I know what you'll say about 34 yr old wiring. I went through those when I replaced the ignition switch. Low voltage at the coil was not the problem (and is 12.1v really low?). About the only thing I never tried was bucking up the voltage feeding the gold box w/ a dc-dc regulator. That might have id'd the actual cause of the low rpm stumble. But that was money/time I was not willing to spend.
Its my belief that no matter how new/good the gold box is, it was never a really good piece of gear. I chased my tail for years with this thing. It never, ever ran right. Not this Right. I went in deeper than needed with the jacobs. I am sure it would have run fine with just the pertonix (or points).
The point to all of this is that the gold box is not your friend. If you have some "originality" issue you are sticking to, well I suppose that's different. But eventually, your truck will not start. Popping in the pertronix is a dead nuts path to gold box elimination. Getting it to trigger a modern day ignition box (many ihcs have them) makes it even better (multi spark discharge, wider gaps, better mileage). And then there's the performance. If you are struggling with a gold box, end your suffering. There is a way out!
Hope this helps.
Over the past 30-some years, my '74 has has been through at least 10 "ghost boxes," (not all new...I would grab them off wrecks when you could still find them at pick-a-part), and at least as many carbs/carb rebuilds. When I had a gold box that was actually working, I spent my time chasing carb stumbles and misses. I changed plugs, wires, ignition switches. Soup to nuts, if there was a component involved in fuel or spark, I messed with it. I was never satisfied. I knew the truck should run better!
In 1999, after the last in a long line gold boxes slowly failed (not unlike the ones described in the thread), I decided I had had enough. I dug out a points distributor, began to clean it up thinking this was going to be the way to go. During that time, I read about pertronix. I thought this was a cool product, and I also thought I could just pop one in the electronic distributor. Unfortunately, they weren't offering one yet, so I went back to the points unit, and retro'd that instead. Thinking I was onto something good, I then plunked down on a jacobs mileagemaster ignition box (some is good, more is better right?). I chose jacobs because a friend had bad luck w/msd customer service (turned out to be his own fault), and like IH philosophy, its something different. Mind you, the thing has not run on the new distributor yet. Not even on points. What was I thinking???
In a nut shell, I got lucky. Real lucky. Not because the gear was so-so (it wasn't-far from it). More because of my shotgun approach to solving the problem. This kind of multi-front approach usually loses battles. But in this case, the bottom line was success.
All I can say is this was by far the most significant performance enhancement I have ever made to the truck. Even rebuilding the engine did not bring this much satisfaction. The truck is a 345 w/t-18 close, 3.73s, 33" tires. Your run of the mill weekend trail rig. Mostly street miles, nothing spectacular. But try to 2nd gear a stop sign, and it would miss, stumble, buck, snort, fart its way up to speed. I would usually save the situation by grabbing clutch, giving it more coal, and trying again. But those days are long gone. I can dump the clutch at idle (in 2nd), watch the revs go down to 400, and just smoothly rumble away. I can get into street traffic without passing 1200 rpms. The thing behaves like a diesel. An absolute stump puller. Torque is really cool! I make excuses to drive it whenever I can now. All I can think of is that low revs presented a tough ignition condition. And I know what you'll say about 34 yr old wiring. I went through those when I replaced the ignition switch. Low voltage at the coil was not the problem (and is 12.1v really low?). About the only thing I never tried was bucking up the voltage feeding the gold box w/ a dc-dc regulator. That might have id'd the actual cause of the low rpm stumble. But that was money/time I was not willing to spend.
Its my belief that no matter how new/good the gold box is, it was never a really good piece of gear. I chased my tail for years with this thing. It never, ever ran right. Not this Right. I went in deeper than needed with the jacobs. I am sure it would have run fine with just the pertonix (or points).
The point to all of this is that the gold box is not your friend. If you have some "originality" issue you are sticking to, well I suppose that's different. But eventually, your truck will not start. Popping in the pertronix is a dead nuts path to gold box elimination. Getting it to trigger a modern day ignition box (many ihcs have them) makes it even better (multi spark discharge, wider gaps, better mileage). And then there's the performance. If you are struggling with a gold box, end your suffering. There is a way out!
Hope this helps.
