MSD -vs- Jacobs

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tried to have an msd box in a truck I had years ago. bought it brand new, wired it per instructions, was fried. msd replaced it, truck ran for an hour or so, dead in the water again. 3rd box, died after 100 miles or so. pulled the thing and and ran the factory ignition for with no troubles for 7 years...but it was a long time ago, would be willing to try them again....
 
yeah give'em a try, I think you'll like how it runs.

sometimes wiring/length , coil resistance, gap, can contribute to poor ignition performance and/or ignition failure.

I like to keep mine next to the battery with short as possible leads and run a msd blaster2 coil.
 
Not to stop the bashing, but getting back to the OP.

What makes you think throwing money at your ignition will make your gas mileage better? It sounds like you have a reasonable combo now. What about your carb, cam, converter and gears? Whats your MPG now and what do you want to gain? A couple #s leaner on your main jets and more vacuum advance would be a good start.
 
Well, no mater the story from who ever, it's an electcial device. That means, it'll quit when it quites and probably without much warning if any at all.
Nature of the beast.
 
C130 Chief said:
Not to stop the bashing, but getting back to the OP.

What makes you think throwing money at your ignition will make your gas mileage better? It sounds like you have a reasonable combo now. What about your carb, cam, converter and gears? Whats your MPG now and what do you want to gain? A couple #s leaner on your main jets and more vacuum advance would be a good start.
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360, J heads, nothing done to the heads, stock bore, Comp cams 262H, Weiand stealth, Edelbrock 750, stock converter, 904 trans 3.23 gears, I'm getting around 10... maybe a bit less if my wife is driving and just running to the store (real short jaunts).

I was playing around with it and noticed that the carb gurgles gas down the secondaries at an idle sometimes... After some poking around, it seems that is a common issue with those if you have more than 6# of fuel pressure, they actually like to see it down around 5.5 #. I"m going to play with carb and fuel next and go from there.

Ahhh one other thing, I am running the stock 318 exhaust manifolds.... can you say corked up? I'm thinking of buying either Dougs or TTIs to put on it... I think that shold make it run better and probably give me a bit more mileage....
 
If you are only getting 10 MPG you have issues that no ignition system will solve. 16-18 MPG would be more like it. 20 on the highway isn't out of the question.

A 1407 is a lot of carb for that combo, and Edelbrock jetted them "for performance". DOUBLE CHECK YOUR FLOAT LEVELS!!! Make sure the metering rods are staying down at cruise, and go 1 step leaner on the primaries (carb manual has good graph). Make sure the vacuum advance is working and connected to the ported (passenger side) port on the carb. With stock compression I would suspect you'll do best with about 10-15 degrees advance at idle.

As for the 318 exhaust manifolds, they will be fine on the street, but will hurt top end (above 3500 or so). Unless you are still running the stock 318 single exhaust, I wouldn't worry too much.
 
C130 Chief said:
If you are only getting 10 MPG you have issues that no ignition system will solve. 16-18 MPG would be more like it. 20 on the highway isn't out of the question.

A 1407 is a lot of carb for that combo, and Edelbrock jetted them "for performance". DOUBLE CHECK YOUR FLOAT LEVELS!!! Make sure the metering rods are staying down at cruise, and go 1 step leaner on the primaries (carb manual has good graph).
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I suspect carb is giving me issues. It is a 1411 (elec choke) supposed to be calibrated a bit more for "economy" than the 1407 but, if it is jetted for economy on a 454, it will be dumping a lot of unburned fuel out the exhaust. I'll play with carb and see how it goes. Thanks
 
I have had a MSD 6A in my Barracuda with a Blaster SS coil since early 2005 and have put over 35,000 miles on it. It has been flawless.

Can't say that it has made any real difference in perfromance but it certainly makes the car start faster. It's running with in a 1/2 revolution.

As far as technology goes MSD makes both analog and digital systems. Mallory, Jacobs and Accel are all part of Prestolite so I would think that there products will be very close in design and reliability.

As far as whether MSD is less reliable than any of the other brands I can't say for sure but: MSD probally sells 10 or more systems for everyone of the other brands. Just by the fact that they have at least an order of magnitude more systems out there they are going to have many more failures even if the failure rate is much better.

For example, assuming 10:1 in sales: lets say MSD has a 5% failure rate and Jacobs/Mallory/Accel a 10% failure rate, that makes MSD twice as good. Lets say MSD has sold 1000 units and Jacobs/Mallory/Accel 100 units (10:1 ratio on sales) there will be 50 MSD failures to 10 Jacobs/Mallory/Accel failures. Now which one are you more likely to hear about? The one that has 5 times more failures.

I believe that anyone of those brands are very good and will provide years of good service. I just wanted to make a point that you need to consider the total population, you will always hear more negative about the company that dominates the market compared to one that has a fraction of the market but that is not an indicator of the probability of you having a problem.
 
dgc333 said:
I have had a MSD 6A in my Barracuda with a Blaster SS coil since early 2005 and have put over 35,000 miles on it. It has been flawless.

Can't say that it has made any real difference in perfromance but it certainly makes the car start faster. It's running with in a 1/2 revolution.

As far as technology goes MSD makes both analog and digital systems. Mallory, Jacobs and Accel are all part of Prestolite so I would think that there products will be very close in design and reliability.

As far as whether MSD is less reliable than any of the other brands I can't say for sure but: MSD probally sells 10 or more systems for everyone of the other brands. Just by the fact that they have at least an order of magnitude more systems out there they are going to have many more failures even if the failure rate is much better.

For example, assuming 10:1 in sales: lets say MSD has a 5% failure rate and Jacobs/Mallory/Accel a 10% failure rate, that makes MSD twice as good. Lets say MSD has sold 1000 units and Jacobs/Mallory/Accel 100 units (10:1 ratio on sales) there will be 50 MSD failures to 10 Jacobs/Mallory/Accel failures. Now which one are you more likely to hear about? The one that has 5 times more failures.

I believe that anyone of those brands are very good and will provide years of good service. I just wanted to make a point that you need to consider the total population, you will always hear more negative about the company that dominates the market compared to one that has a fraction of the market but that is not an indicator of the probability of you having a problem.
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thats very well put....and at the end of the day, its all a matter of personal preference...for me, msd just seemed to risky to take the chance after reading about them on the net and all the stuff i hear about them (even if its because they sell more product) and then having my buddy's box crap out on him out of nowhere just sealed the deal...i think mallory is a very overlooked company, and the only complaints i have heard about them if any was about some of their distributors..i thought for the price and quality they seemed like a better bet...

good luck to the OP...i think regardless of what brand you choose the guys on here will definatly point you towards a good product from any of them
 
mshred said:
....and at the end of the day, its all a matter of personal preference...for me, ....
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Absolutely! As long as you make your decision with your eyes wide open and understand why you made the decision you aren't likely to be disappointed.
 
mshred said:
...i think mallory is a very overlooked company, and the only complaints i have heard about them if any was about some of their distributors..i thought for the price and quality they seemed like a better bet...
Mallory used to be a dominate force in the scene,back in the 80s and early 90s they were every where and were very big in racing but they dwindled and were almost all but gone for quite a few years.Anybody around then remembers supershops and they carried mallory exclusively,the problem was their ignition boxes were basic and were never really updated and their unitlite distributors-although a great design on paper-had alot of failures with the pickups and the advance mechanism when adjusted tended to float around.Im sure alot of this was the result of whoever owned them at the time.Today they have some pretty good products on the market again,makes you wonder how much was crossed over from the jacobs/accel stuff.
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