Great to hear about you getting out there with your son……working with the kids has always been fun for me.

As far as the Pertronix kits I remember hearing about problems with them a few years back, but not lately. I’ve personally had good luck with them and suspect that some of the problems may have been caused by people either using a coil with improper resistance or not running a ballast resistor with them.

I’m running a Pertronix conversion on the Mallory dual point in the 283 in the Ram 50. Up until last summer I’d never run an engine with the Pertronix conversion for more than 3 or 4 hours straight. I took the truck back to Illinois last fall (24 hours straight out there and 24 hours straight on the way back) only stopping for gas and bathroom breaks. The Pertronix never missed a beat and is still going strong.

BUT if you have the original cast iron Prestolite distributor I would convert it to electronic using stock Chrysler parts. It’s what I’m running on the HEMIs in the 57 and 37 and with the exception of 2 very minor modifications it’s a drop in conversion. If there ever is a problem with it, it’s all stock parts that any parts store should have.



What you will need is the breaker plate, pickup coil, reluctor wheel, upper shaft and vacuum advance from a later (73 and up NON-Lean burn) 318-360 small block Mopar. You can’t use a BB Mopar parts because it turns in the opposite direction of the SB and the vacuum advance will pull the breaker plate in the wrong direction. I used to have a few of the electronic distributors laying around and would just gut one for the required parts, but you should be able to souse them new locally.


The conversion itself involves removing the original breaker plate and vacuum advance. In the center of the upper shaft is a felt plug that you pull out and then remove the wire “C” clip that holds the upper shaft (which can be the hardest part of the whole job LOL).





Once the original upper shaft is removed you will need to set the new breaker plate in the housing. One of the retaining screws that comes in from the side will line up, but you will need to drill a second hole (next to the cap hold down clip). Once the new hole is drilled, install the new upper shaft and install the breaker plate with pickup and vacuum advance and press on the reluctor wheel. On the new vacuum advance there will be a metal prong built into the bracket that indexes the distributor cap on the newer distributor…..this will need to be bent over (as I did on mine) or cut off so the cap will fit. You will want to enlarge the hole the distributor lead goes thru (cutting it to the top of the distributor so the grommet on the plug lead now slides into it). Set the air gap on the reluctor wheel/pickup to .008-.010 with a brass feeler gauge and it’s good to go.




That just leaves a couple of things. The distributor cap you will need to use is the 56 -61 MOPAR cap (Airtex/Wells 5D1024 or Standard AL148). The rotor you will need is just a standard mid 60s up V8 MOPAR rotor (Airtex/Wells 4R1021 or Standard CH303).


You will also need a control box to trigger the coil. I’m using a Chrysler Orange box on the 37 and the wiring is pretty straight forward.




I’m using an MSD 6AL on the 57 Plymouth I don’t have a copy of that wiring diagram, but it was just follow the MSD instructions.

Less the control box and coil, total for the conversion should be under $50.


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