[snowman]

Klaus and Mark S. are correct. I am an electronics design engineer, consultant, with 30 years real world design experience, mostly military, but also commercial, communications, ham radio, GPS both receivers and space apps, missiles, munitions, radios, and misc applications, in the most severe environmental conditions possible, ie -55 deg C to Plus 120 degrees C operating, 100,s of G's operating, 1000,s of Gs inpulse, salt spray, humidity, rain dust, sand, ice and snow, scortching heat and worse. I also have a bsee and msee in electrical engineering. I would go to a modern ignition system, such as motec or electromotive if rules permit. Note the key word, SYSTEM. That means every component is designed to work togather. You can't just change one component and expect all the other components to survive or work porperly. The main benefit, of a state of the art ignition system, is more precise control of ignition curve, a good rev limiter, repeatable, high energy spark of the proper duration. All good for good low emmissions, but almost no impact on power. I personally think most of the other stuff out there, esp msd is just bs and marketing. The only real benefit of these ignition systems is to a street car, not a race car. Why? well they prevent fowling of the plugs due to all the bad things people do with their street cars, allow use of no octane junk gas without detonataing your engine and so forth, almost none of it applicable to a properly kept race car. A good set of points with a conventional ignition can make a race engine make exactly the same power as the most exotic system anywhere. Precise control of spark, knock detection and so forth are useful, but again mostly in a street car. Why? well you don't put pump gas in your race car do you? You put 110 octane or better (consequently not much worry about the knock detector) and so forth.

AN additonal comment, mostly pretains to Porsches, becaust they are air cooled and especially subject to detonation as a consequence of the higher cylinder temps. A lot of Porsche people run their engines un necessarily rich, why? because its safer. If you don't have a good handle on your air fuel ratio, the safest way is to run it rich, You loose a little power, but at least you don't burn it up. As a consequence many Porsches are subject to plug fowling. this in turn necissitates an overly hot ignition to keep the plugs clean. Proper way to fix it is to fix the AF ratio, but thats HARD to do, so the simple way is to do it, wrong, and compensate. So knowing that Porsche racers tend to need hot ignitions, whats the best, hot ignition? I would go with electromotive, with a coil per cylinder or motec with the same coil per cylinder. these ignitions produce a spark that will burn thru anything, and keep burning long enough to fire any gas that happend to be in the cylinder. NOTHING else can do what these systems can, esp MSD. As to those old folks who think a MAGnito is the way to go, thing again, those mags take a lot of hp to do what a modern system can with a lot less loss.