It occurs to me that this item is not in the correct place. It isn't anywhere on my wiring diagrams. It looks like a condensor like you would find in a points distributor, but I converted to Pertronix. It was attached to primary negative circuit of coil.



My buddy installed the coil and made all the connections while I was under the car working on the shift linkage. He's a Chevy guy so you never know

I want to say it's a condenser? Don't they go in the distributor?

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The Old Goat '83 D150 225-2

AKA Ice Titan

It's a condenser (capacitor) for noise suppression. It's job is to reduce electrical noise. If you don't have noise in your radio with it disconnected you can live without it with no ill effects.

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Joshua

Oh ok. Should it be connected to negative or positive primary on coil? It doesn't seem quite right where it is due to a lack of space, but that could also be the taller fuel pump inlet/outlet.

BTW, if I have a Pertronix ignitor kit, and I'm keeping my ballast resistor, do I need to connect the red lead from pertronix to the ballast resistor, or the coil? My ballast resistor is wired a little different than the one in the Ignitor instruction manual so I'm not sure. My resister has 4 wires, two that head to the ignition switch, one that comes from the VR, and one that goes to the coil. I think I've been bipassing my ballast resistor this entire time

Here is a link to the instructions. I'm pretty sure I have the 6V unit, but I didn't save the box.

http://www.pertronix.com/downloads/ignitor6vneg.pdf

The noise suppression condenser goes on the + side.

The + lead for the Pertronix should probably go to the ignition switch side of the ballast resistor. Personally I'd use the Pertronix coil and bypass the ballast resistor and eliminate that point of failure.

Why would you have the 6 volt negative ground Pertronix?

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Joshua

Ok, thanks Josh,

I was thinking lower voltage because the coil has the voltage regulator and ballast resistor keeping it from getting the full 12 volts from the battery. Also, I measured the voltage to the coil at about 6 volts.

I guess I should have gone full electronic ingnition before I spent 100 bucks on the Pertronix. Now I'm thinking about getting a new coil, distributor, HEI module and voltage regulator, eliminating the ballast resistor and the Pertronix. I know I need a voltage regulator anyways. And I suspect my coil is a bit weak as well.

The 6V Pertronix is for 6V electrical systems. The ballast resistor drops the coil voltage. The voltage regulator controls the alternator output.

The HEI module retrofit is easy to do. If you can score a later electronic distributor like a Super Six unit they are supposed to have a better advance curve than the early ones. The early electronic distributors had a lot of mechanical advance to make up for the late initial timing. So if you set the initial timing where the engine likes it you get too much advance in the midrange and top end.

My Valiant is getting the HEI module and a recurved electronic distributor. I'll probably use the MSD blaster coil since it will fit the stock bracket.

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Joshua

Yeah; a friend of mine had a 79 Silvarado for a long time, then he bought a 5.9 R/T Dakota...

-still wagged my finger at him when he tried to 'help' me rebuild a suregrip 8 1/4