123 Dizzy - with or without vacuum advance?, Sucks... Options

[chmillman]

Last post of the evening, promised...

Last year one of my mechanics suggested putting in a 123 dizzy. I said OK, why not. The model he installed was the dip-switch one with curve #2 set, but without vacuum advance port (plus a coil to match). The vacuum hose was simply plugged. Installing the 123 did not actually fix the hesitation problems we were having, which were most likely elsewhere in the FI system.

My other mechanic here who is a specialist in D-Jetronic stuff looked at that and said "This is not good, it needs at least vacuum advance!" He cleaned, lubed and re-set up the original distributor plus the coil and re-hooked up both the vacuum advance and retard hose connections. He's admittedly more of an 'originalist', says the whole thing is a system designed to work together, so he was not fond of replacing the original mechanical dizzy with an electronic one, especially without a vacuum advance. He pointed out that if one really wants to do that anyway, the 123 units were also available with a vacuum port, and suggested that the other guy simply ordered the wrong dizzy model.

So now I'm here in between these two guys - who are both my friends by now given the stuff we've done together - and I'm no expert in the matter, so I don't know who's 'right'... Possibly both.