I fitted a similar system made by Powerspark to a Bentley R Type recently,unlike the Petronix I was not so impressed with the fit but in it went, we had great difficulty getting the car to start and when it did it ran very badly seemed to be on 3 rather than 6 cylinders, rev the engine same effect you encountered. That evening I spent a bit of time on the web and came upon an Austin Healey forum with a lot of adverse comments on the powerspark and petronix system, the gist of what they were saying , reliability issues aside, was that you have to reset the timing to suit the system not what it says in the cars manual therefore if the unit failed you just could not put the points back in and away to go because the timing would be all to hell.
The next day out it came and the points went back in , the car ran perfectly, I would have sent the pwerspark back but my mechanic took me at my word when I said I was going to bin It!
Within days of this I met someone who fitted the Petronix system to his MK Vi Bentley and again had problems that forced him to revert to the points, our discussion on the relative merits of these systems took place while peering under the hood of my other R Type to which I had just fitted a Winterburn Capacitor Discharge Ignition System made and supplied by Fred Winterburn in Canada, this unit retains the points as a trigger, offers three settings CD , Points and Off so can be used as an immobiliser, wiring is straight forward the unit is not polarity sensitive and has totally overcome the hot start problem I had with these cars after standing for about 10 mins,
the only adjustment you might have to make is to the tickover speed which rises slightly after these units are fitted, because of the way they work they can be used on any 4, 6, 8 cylinder engine etc so unlike the competition you do not need a unit specific to your engine.
The car runs smoother and pulls better under acceleration, I was very impressed with this system which I have now fitted to my other R Type and to my V8 S2 and will at some time in the future be going on to my 410 and 401.
Fred tells me he has another customer in the UK who has fitted his system to a 401 with good results, this is not a sustem that fits in the distributor however it requires space on the bulkhead to mount the Black Box which measures 3"x 6" and approx 3" deep and does not look at all out of place.
If you seach for capacitordischargeignitionsystems you should find Freds site and a lot more info if you want to fit something that works is easy to fit and does not compromise the cars timing settings.
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