It was the Nova II modules which wouldn’t hold up to the job while mounted on an OMC mag. Not the red Atoms, which were originally designed for outboard mags.
A few years ago I posted in detail here about a dozen Nova II’s I bought and tried. They would last between one and forty five minutes before failing. The motor they were being tested on was an early seventies four horse with points style ignition. The motor would start and run just fine but would drop a cylinder in a short time, as if a plug wire had fallen off.
One electrically talented member here figured that since the original patent on the Atoms had expired , everyone was free to make them now and were using inferior parts compared to the originals and they couldn’t stand the voltage spikes the OMC mag produced. Others have claimed to have success with the Nova/Nova II modules but I don’t what make of outboard they used them on. I did have a four horse Chrysler once which came with a Nova and it worked OK while I owned it. I do remember when Debe was making Atom copies, he was having trouble finding transistors which would match the quality of the originals.
Any part can fail, but some do more than others, just like Champion spark plugs right out of the box do.
