Coil question

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wazoo64

wazoo64

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I have a Mallory electronic dist and my mallory coil was leaking.(Brand new) and went to replace. Had to replace with MSD Blaster (red) coil. Went for a drive and it drives fine but wont hold an idle. I have to keep the rpm at 2k or it will quit. By the way the coil is mounted horizontal if the matters.
Can the MSD coil be mounted vertical? Is it compatible with my Mallory Dist??
 
I had a MSD coil and mine started leaking some oil, I replaced with another I had. I had mine mounted at an angle, but after I pulled it I took a small screwdriver and checked the screw insite the coil wire hole and it was loose! My buddy said it should be good again since it didn't leak much oil, just make sure it doesn't get too hot. I would check this on yours, you can maybe still use it!

Picture 095.jpg
 
MSD recomends that you mount the vertically but that should not be the cause of the engine not wanting to run below 2000 rpm. I would look for a timing or carb issue
 
sent you a PM Frank. Check your float levels too.

Good tip Keith on the coil screw
 
I spoke to Mallory tech support today and they suggested an epoxy filled coil if mounting horizontally. I ordered the promaster e-series. Anyone have any luck with these?
 
I have had both the mallory and msd coils on different cars and both were running mallory unilite distibutors and ran great. one question i had was did the car run ok with the mallory coil before you noticed it leaking?
 
camd64 said:
I have had both the mallory and msd coils on different cars and both were running mallory unilite distibutors and ran great. one question i had was did the car run ok with the mallory coil before you noticed it leaking?
Click to expand...

Yes, in fact it was running flawless. That's why my gut tells me it the coil or the module got fried. I had the ignition on for a long time while working on some interior lights and that's what caused the coil to boil up. Just for clarification I have the magnetic breakerless distributor. I thought it was a unilite but I was wrong. I was told the breakerless has a more durable module and I am hoping its not the problem.
 
I reinstalled the orginal mallory coil and it worked. The MSD blaster 2 will not work properly with the mallory ignition. The secondary resistance is different and most likely the culprit. Ridiculous.
 
I installed the promaster E coil today so i dont have to worry about leaks and it makes a loud buzzing sound. Anyone know why? Is this normal? I have it mounted under my dash and it makes way too much noise.
 
For many good reasons, the secondary (hi-voltage) circuits were kept as short as possible, and ON the engine.
One end of the coil's secondary is usually the case, and electrically, "wants" the see the best possible path back to the outside of the spark plugs.
This is ideally through a well grounded coil strap, bolted to the engine.
Any other mounting location should then be equipped with some kind of VERY
heavy ground wire from the coil case back to the block.
This wire will make radio interference like mad (unlike mounting to the block).
And the coil is noisy by nature, we just don't hear it when it's out with the engine. On sub-zero mornings such minor things make the difference in going
to work or not. Mopars start fine at -25f if you have a strong spark.
This probably is never a concern for you, but it's why the factory wirings
were set up as they were.

Oh, and if that's the epoxy coil, it's noiser cause it's a solid, not a liquid for heat dissapation.
Oil was picked as the standard a long time ago, because in addition to carrying heat away from wiring very well, it also damped sound of the coil.
 
Dart Advantage said:
For many good reasons, the secondary (hi-voltage) circuits were kept as short as possible, and ON the engine.
One end of the coil's secondary is usually the case, and electrically, "wants" the see the best possible path back to the outside of the spark plugs.
This is ideally through a well grounded coil strap, bolted to the engine.
Any other mounting location should then be equipped with some kind of VERY
heavy ground wire from the coil case back to the block.
This wire will make radio interference like mad (unlike mounting to the block).
And the coil is noisy by nature, we just don't hear it when it's out with the engine. On sub-zero mornings such minor things make the difference in going
to work or not. Mopars start fine at -25f if you have a strong spark.
This probably is never a concern for you, but it's why the factory wirings
were set up as they were.

Oh, and if that's the epoxy coil, it's noiser cause it's a solid, not a liquid for heat dissapation.
Oil was picked as the standard a long time ago, because in addition to carrying heat away from wiring very well, it also damped sound of the coil.
Click to expand...

Good info Thanks.
 
I pulled the distributor to have it checked and found the module to be bad. Even though it worked and the car ran the module was creating some weird acitvity on the bench test. I replaced the module, installed a new coil using exact same wiring configuration I had when the car was running. Now I cant even get the car to start up. I thought that I may have installed distributor 180 degrees off but thats not the case. All I can get is a backfire. I dont know where to go from here. The only thing that I have not replaced is the ballast resistor. It only has 500 miles on it. If the module and coil were fried could the ballast be fried also??? and would that cause the car not to start at all???
 
fwaugh said:
I installed the promaster E coil today so i dont have to worry about leaks and it makes a loud buzzing sound. Anyone know why? Is this normal? I have it mounted under my dash and it makes way too much noise.
Click to expand...

Buzzing from a transformer is typically from loose segments in the core. A lot of E-core transformer cores are made up of thin plates, if these don't get bonded together in the manufacturing process they can vibrate as a result of the rising an falling magnetic field causing the buzz.

When you have the buzzing the magnetic coupling between the primary and secondary is not as good and you loose some efficiency. In the case of a ignition coil it won't work as well at high rpm.
 
This is why I like points. You can open/close them with the ignition on and SEE if current is getting through the dash, switch, ballast resistor, ponts and ignition all in one little glance.
Once you've determined that on your solid-state version, you must have
a good ground on the outside of that coil to the engine block then try again.
 
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