Resolved. - Dead in the field. Ignition module ?

Adrian Worman · Post by **Adrian Worman** » Mon Jul 25, 11 10:30 pm

As they say in Team America...................."Bananarama! yeah!!!"

Dave999 · Post by **Dave999** » Mon Jul 25, 11 11:09 pm

now buy the $15 HEIs instead

you can have 3 of 4 of them each trip for the cost of the mopar box

Dave

morgan · Post by **morgan** » Tue Jul 26, 11 8:12 am

Dave999 wrote:now buy the $15 HEIs instead

you can have 3 of 4 of them each trip for the cost of the mopar box

Dave

There's irony.
I could go through 3 or 4 orange boxes on ANY given trip...

Dave-R · Post by **Dave-R** » Tue Jul 26, 11 10:18 am

Morgan, Come find me on Sunday. I will have this in my car for you.

Dave999 · Post by **Dave999** » Tue Jul 26, 11 10:28 am

Thats the very thing

notice good to 7500 rpm
and features dwell control to stop coil over heating at low RPM

similar setup on the mopar side is chrome box territory

pair it with a blaster or Bosch 12 volter
and bypass your ballast

mines mouted on a bit of ally angle and jubilee clipped to my dizzy for common earth
i stuck a maplin heat sink on the bottom

here is the distructions

Dave-R · Post by **Dave-R** » Tue Jul 26, 11 10:42 am

Dave999 wrote:Thats the very thing

notice good to 7500 rpm
and features dwell control to stop coil over heating at low RPM

Yes it is a good one. Better than the stanndard GM version. Cost me £25 off ebay I think?

I bought it in case the FBO ignition didn't work out. Which did eventually but not before the ECU needed replacing on that too.

morgan · Post by **morgan** » Tue Jul 26, 11 9:33 pm

Cheers Dave. WIll do. I have your paypal details here I think. Will check.

Well - Update.
Made some lovely brackets up - ECU now sitting clear. Car starts first flick. All is good. Vroom vroom. She is running rough, but smooths out with heat.

Once warm check her - 2 things are odd.
1) Only seeing 12.17 at battery on idle.
2) Ammeter in car is now running at -20 constantly. Used to sit in the middle.

Either of these seem odd ? Strikes me that new alternator is not charging. Sigh. Its a 2 pin alt, but this should be fine - wired up as instructed, one pin into volt reg and one to ballast (spliced). Battery is flat now, so thats kinda that for tonight.

Headed for home. Got here, turned her off. SPLOOSH ! Dumps the contents of the rad out the second I turned car off. She has never overheated before (and its not like I was in traffic, I blasted up the road and back).

One step forward, 2 steps back...

Dave-R · Post by **Dave-R** » Tue Jul 26, 11 9:50 pm

morgan wrote:Cheers Dave. WIll do. I have your paypal details here I think. Will check.

No no! I don't want anything for it! It's yours. If you want to be clever then clean out the guts of one of your knackered ECUs and mount the HEI chip inside so the whole thing looks Mopar.

Once warm check her - 2 things are odd.
1) Only seeing 12.17 at battery on idle.

Does the voltage increase to normal at 1000rpm? What is your current rpm?

2) Ammeter in car is now running at -20 constantly. Used to sit in the middle.[\quote]

You not by-passed that sucker yet? Wire as per the instructions on the Mad Electrical website and fit a volts guage. But it could be showing a short circuit somewhere. Which would pull the voltage down.

Dave999 · Post by **Dave999** » Wed Jul 27, 11 9:19 am

mine does that well mine swings to the right all the way to the end of the scale

until ive driven for a bit

basically i have a old school aussie pickup truck battery. fills the tray
needs longer rods on the clamp
flip top lid for top up

boils over occasionally but other than that bloody good

been in the car 10 years this year (smashin bit of kit most would have died)

the kind that survives big changes in charge level

if i leave the car for 6 months and do nout with it

it will start fine cos the battery has so much current flow cold cranking it could do the job at 50% charge

but your battery is obvioulsy down on charge

after 15-20 miles the ammeter climbs back to 0 and only jumps if i switch on the hater the lights and the wipers

i'e don't worry about it until you have put 20 miles on it at reasonably high rpm

of get out the battery charger and give it a fast charge for an hour

Dave

morgan · Post by **morgan** » Thu Jul 28, 11 8:47 am

Put old alternator back in. Current now works fine - guage in the middle, car runs good. Battery charges.

So - new alternator potentially no good - now need to get tested. Annoying.

MAde it to Harpenden yesterday, but not without drama. Big overheating problems (something she has NEVER done) - used 20 litres of water over 4 breakdowns - She just kept boiling up and throwing it out - was blowing like a steam train (engine compartment now very mucky).
So no NATS for me - ah well. C'est la vie. No point debugging really - I know I needed to do the rad at some point - its a 2 core small block item and although it has been perfect I meant to beef it up at some point. Will look into that now before trying to diagnose. (it is odd though - always been faultless.)

Thanks to all who helped on this one. Ignition is now fixed, although car is off road for another reason.

Thanks !

Dave-R · Post by **Dave-R** » Thu Jul 28, 11 9:54 am

PLENTY initial timing also makes the engine run cooler. But it sounds a bit more serious that that.

RobTwin · Post by **RobTwin** » Wed Aug 08, 12 4:13 pm

Morgan - did you get to the bottom of this?

It's all sounding too familiar...

RobTwin · Post by **RobTwin** » Mon Aug 13, 12 3:23 pm

Hi Dave R - have you still got that GM HEI, or did Morgan get it off you?

We'd like to give it a go, if still available

Otherwise, where's best to get them from?

morgan · Post by **morgan** » Mon Aug 13, 12 3:29 pm

RobTwin wrote:Morgan - did you get to the bottom of this?

It's all sounding too familiar...

Yep.
2 things.
1 - some clown in the past had run a wire direct from the back of the fuse board at 12v into the old mechanical dizzy. Dont know why. Then some other clown (me) replicated the fault when he put the brand new loom and electronic in place. My coil was getting a direct 12v feed on top of its 8v. Now I dont know the specifics as to why but I have decided this was what was popping the orange boxes... Been clean since.

2 - Not all voltage regulators are created equal. The old mechanical ones are not suitable (learned the hard way). The blue 'race only' onces are not suitable. Learned the hard way. They run for a bit (like couple of months) then 'pop'. Got a stock-looking-FBO one in there now with electronic innards. All good.

In short I think the orange boxes were just the weakest link in a 2 fault chain. Between direct feeding and wrong voltage regs they just popped.

Thats the theory anyhow...

morgan · Post by **morgan** » Mon Aug 13, 12 3:33 pm

Dave wrote:PLENTY initial timing also makes the engine run cooler. But it sounds a bit more serious that that.

Oh - update 12 months late - it was a stuck thermostat. Seized and the massive backpressure just blew out like a steam-cleaner. Looked like a dragon snorting. 10 minute fix in the end... should have just popped the old one out at the side of the road and been done.