Believe in the GM HEI ignition now?

BillGrissom said

While I promote the HEI, especially for those with points, I think there are too many variables to claim that HEI improved your idle. Sometimes changing the Mopar ECU helps, not because the ECU was bad but the ground screw got a better connection in the process. I am sure you also re-timed the distributor.

I prefer the junkyard, not just because cheap, but because that red/wht cable is a factory GM part that looks better and you can easily unplug. Someday, you can control spark timing via that 2nd Metri-pak connector, with a Holley Commander ECU or others that support the 8-pin HEI module.

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I wouldn't run points for anything. My dad put the old Delta Mk whatever ignition box on all his cars before factory electronic came out. When factory electronic came out he (an electrical engineer by degree) would have nothing else. We had a REAL "lab scope" the old Tek 540 series mainframe with the Ignition Analyzer plug in and the pattern was so much better it was unreal. I have some of the old Polaroid screenshots and if I can find them I'll scan them and put them up.

He said, and I believe, that CD only really made sense if you could run a surface gap plug, as the outboards did in the seventies and eighties. There was an aftermarket surface gap plug JC Whitney soldm for a while, but AC and Champion never would make them for any automotive application. Traco used to run them in Chevies by getting a long reach type and turning the threads back on a lathe.

I was thinking about EDIS for a while, but getting a tonewheel on the crank would be too much like work.

When it was introduced in the early seventies the Mopar electronic ignition was the best in the world. I think the problem is that the third party ignition boxes now are not much good and also there have been substantial improvements in switching semiconductors, Years ago I depotted a Mopar box with the intention of tracing out a schematic and seeing if I could rebuild it, but it fell by the wayside.

When the 1993 flood happened they dumpstered piles of flooded parts from a local parts store and I scrounged the items I thought I could salvage. I got several HEI modules which were filthy and nasty, I soaked them in DI water and Tide, rinsed and dried. I have two of them in two cars running now and another tested spare in each.