Hei conversion troubleshooting

[smokinnjokin]

Did a lot more research, and it looks the the module really should get a 12g supply wire as well. Now i am questioning my grounds also, they are all 18g wire. Maybe not the source of my ignition cutting out issue, but could cause problems in the future.
My next step is to take the module and my spare to an autoparts store to test. I'll report back after.

 

[smokinnjokin]

Saturday update:
I took my wiring harness out and re-did it, it is a work of art at this point. 12g wire to the coil and the module, 14g grounds from module to block, relay to firewall and ignition coil frame (its an e-core, has the outer metal frame) to the intake manifold. This is the only ground I'm iffy about, as the intake manifold is aluminum, but its an extra ground anyway as the ignition coil negative lead runs to the control module.


I took the modules (one I have been using and spare) to test at OhReilly's. Both failed. Bought another one (same, standard LX301). Hooked it up with the new harness and fired up the motor.

Exact. Same. Damn. Problem. No change whatsoever.
So I'm thinkin, great something is causing my system to burn up modules. Took the new module back to Ohreillys, test again and it fails I notice that the tech guy is grounding it improperly. Instruct him to ground it on the proper stud and voila, it passes. So then I'm like what the hell, lets test the one that was in the car again, and it passes also.

So ignition modules are good.

This leaves me with 3 possible solutions:

1) Still insufficient voltage or ground to module/coil. Don't know how this could be possible with my kickass wiring harness, but I have yet to see a multimeter reading off the coil positive or module supply terminal during the bad running condition so I can't rule it out. It shows no voltage drop with ign key on. I ordered some alligator clip extensions for my multimeter from amazon, as soon as they show up I will rule this possibility out. Without them, it is impossible to rev the motor and keep the leads in place.

2) Ignition coil is fried. Brand new, standard FD478 E-core, its not getting hot or anything so IDK how it could be bad. I have the old coil to test, but of course I don't have an old male-male coil wire to test it with. And none of the damn autoparts stores around here sell a single wire, only sets. So... not sure what to do with that one.

3) Something is wrong with the distributor. As discussed above, have verified that the wires (orange and black) aren't reversed. I have no clue what in a brand new distributor could cause ignition to become erratic over 2k rpm.

Finally, I'm putting in new autolite 65's in tonight, old ones (64's for some reason, weird) were badly fouled from all my troubleshooting. Gap set to .045" as recommended for HEI. I don't want to close them down, thats a band-aid. It should run properly all the way up to 0.060 with HEI, especially with my ultra-low compression smog dog motor.

 

[smokinnjokin]

I think I just figured it out. Rotor phasing in my BRAND NEW distributor. With no advance in, the rotor is just barely lining up with the lead edge of the cap contact. As advance comes in, it gets farther away. With full advance in, its probably sitting directly in between cap contacts. My understand is that it is supposed to be on the trailing edge of the contact at base advance setting, so that as advance comes in it sweeps across the contact.

 

[67Dart273]

I think I just figured it out. Rotor phasing in my BRAND NEW distributor. With no advance in, the rotor is just barely lining up with the lead edge of the cap contact. As advance comes in, it gets farther away. With full advance in, its probably sitting directly in between cap contacts. My understand is that it is supposed to be on the trailing edge of the contact at base advance setting, so that as advance comes in it sweeps across the contact.

If it's between contacts IT IS WRONG. But it should start --or at least is acceptable--to start at one corner, contact to contact, and the advance will sweep the two past each other and "may" end up at the opposite corner to corner. Mechanical advance "only" SHOULD NOT CHANGE phasing very much, because the mechanical advance movement should keep it aligned. It is the vacuum advance that causes the big phasing change.

If you notice EG the Mopar factory distributors, the reluctor has two key slots and an arrow for CCW (B / RB block) and a CW arrow at the opposite key for LA blocks. This is because of distributor mechanics, the phasing is different between B/ RB and LA engines. There has been "reports" that even some Mopar dist. are not properly in phase. Evidence of this would be cap carbon tracking

 

[smokinnjokin]

Ok, so the reluctor was 180 out, I swapped it and now the rotor sweeps across as vac comes in. Put it back on the car, and the original problem of course persists.

Oddly, I am now showing 15v+ at idle and climbing to 16, 17 as I rev the motor up. Does this mean I fried my regulator? I am sharing a ground between the regulator and the power relay for the ignition control module. Not sure if that has anything to do with it.

 

[67Dart273]

There are 3 aspects besides the regulator itself

1...Voltage drop in the circuit path from the battery to the regulator. The regulator will overcharge by the amount of this drop. Connect a voltmeter as close (electrically) to the regulator as you can get. Your 12V feed to the ignition system (ballast resistor junction) or the alternator blue field wire are probably as close as you can get. Turn the key to "run" with engine stopped. Put the other probe directly on the battery + post. You should read a VERY low voltage the lower the better. Anything above say .3V or so (3/10 of one volt) is voltage drop, and more is worse. What is HARD to check is the VR connector itself. Examine the VR connector and VR itself for corrosion, looseness, etc

2....Voltage drop in the ground circuit. The VR MUST be grounded electrically to "same as battery" negative. To check this run engine at fast idle, with battery up and normalized. Check first with all loads off, and again with lights, heater, etc on. Stab one probe directly into the VR mounting flange, to get through paint, rust, etc. Stab the other probe into the top of battery NEG. Here again, the lower the better, zero is perfect

3... In some cases the battery itself can cause this. Sub another known good battery and try it.

If these 3 things check out, replace the VR. It is rare for a VR to overcharge like this. Usually, they fail "no charge" or "full charge" meaning the voltage goes high and gets higher.

 

[67Dart273]

So far as ignition, not sure what to suggest at this point. Maybe "for grins" find any stocker Mopar breakerless and sub that. To give you an example, (My Dart is still apart) I simply mounted the module direct to the firewall. It was an experiment to see if there was enough heat sink there. Ran it two summers that way

I also built an emergency ignition box which I've used to "test fire" some engines. It is an Echlin module in a box, with a stock Mopar coil.

Uses this circuit

And test fired several engines since then

This is an EFI engine I test ran. Made a horrid adapter to bold an AFB on top of a beer keg EFI

LMFAO Anybody figure out what this is?

 

[smokinnjokin]

There are 3 aspects besides the regulator itself

1...Voltage drop in the circuit path from the battery to the regulator. The regulator will overcharge by the amount of this drop. Connect a voltmeter as close (electrically) to the regulator as you can get. Your 12V feed to the ignition system (ballast resistor junction) or the alternator blue field wire are probably as close as you can get. Turn the key to "run" with engine stopped. Put the other probe directly on the battery + post. You should read a VERY low voltage the lower the better. Anything above say .3V or so (3/10 of one volt) is voltage drop, and more is worse. What is HARD to check is the VR connector itself. Examine the VR connector and VR itself for corrosion, looseness, etc

2....Voltage drop in the ground circuit. The VR MUST be grounded electrically to "same as battery" negative. To check this run engine at fast idle, with battery up and normalized. Check first with all loads off, and again with lights, heater, etc on. Stab one probe directly into the VR mounting flange, to get through paint, rust, etc. Stab the other probe into the top of battery NEG. Here again, the lower the better, zero is perfect

3... In some cases the battery itself can cause this. Sub another known good battery and try it.

If these 3 things check out, replace the VR. It is rare for a VR to overcharge like this. Usually, they fail "no charge" or "full charge" meaning the voltage goes high and gets higher.

With key in run, Multimeter from battery positive terminal to VR terminal, I'm showing 1v. Unplug the VR, voltage drops down to normal range. With car started, it drops to 0.8v. What could be causing this huge drop? I spliced the 4 ballast resistor wires together, I wonder if there is an issue with my splice. They arent all 4 hooked together, its 2 and 2. Should it have been all 4 in one connector?

 

[TrailBeast]

With key in run, Multimeter from battery positive terminal to VR terminal, I'm showing 1v. Unplug the VR, voltage drops down to normal range. With car started, it drops to 0.8v. What could be causing this huge drop? I spliced the 4 ballast resistor wires together, I wonder if there is an issue with my splice. They arent all 4 hooked together, its 2 and 2. Should it have been all 4 in one connector?

Just so you know. the coil body does not require grounding.
I would run a 12v wire direct from the battery+ to the coil+ and module+ and try it that way.
This eliminates all the old ballast wire questions and gives a known good supply with nothing to cause drops.

Also when swapping to HEI I tie all the ballast wires together at one point.
Usually ign1, ign2 and the regulator (sense) wire blue, and the new coil+ wire.

 

[pishta]

got a scope or a DMM that measures frequency? Chuck the distributor in a variable speed drill and measure the trigger frequency at varying speeds off the module. You may be able to do this by measuring continuity on an analog meter from trigger to ground but the faster you go, the smaller the needle sweep will appear as needle sweep is slower than a scope resolution. 3000 RPM is 1500 spark events X8/M coil triggers (12000) or 200 cycles per second (Hz) . old scopes usually are 10KHz and above, here is a simple 200KHz one for $23! great little toy tool that would actually work in this manner.

DSO138 Fully Welded Assembled 2.4" TFT Digital Oscilloscope (1Msps) + Probe US | eBay

 

[smokinnjokin]

Just so you know. the coil body does not require grounding.
I would run a 12v wire direct from the battery+ to the coil+ and module+ and try it that way.
This eliminates all the old ballast wire questions and gives a known good supply with nothing to cause drops.

Also when swapping to HEI I tie all the ballast wires together at one point.
Usually ign1, ign2 and the regulator (sense) wire blue, and the new coil+ wire.

I have already run a relay so that I'm getting 12v direct from the battery (via starter relay terminal) to coil and ignition module with 12g wire.

I will go back and hook all the ballast wires together. Although, my electrical system was charging properly before I wired up the relay. It is hooked up exactly according to the hand-drawn diagram I posted above. Idk how it could be having an effect on the charging system, unless that coil and module are just drawing that much voltage. That doesn't really make sense though.

If I am showing a 1v drop from battery terminal to the regulator positive terminal, that would indicate that the regulator is working properly, correct? That it is trying to compensate for that voltage drop?

 

[smokinnjokin]

PROBLEM FIXED! But I don't know how...

So, I took the whole wiring harness back out of the car and re-did my bypass for the ballast resistor, put all the wires together in one splice. I re-soldered the wire from alternator to the voltage regulator, and some of the connections to my relay (shortened some to fit in with my factory harness on the firewall and look cleaner).

Then I took my old tan cap, drilled a big hole in the side so I could look at rotor phasing. Hooked everything up, fired up the car and holy **** problem solved. Revs nice and clean, no hiccups. Rotor phasing looks good under mechanical advance, staying squared up on the contact throughout the rev range.

The VR issue is partially resolved now... Voltage is steady around 13.4-14 at idle and shoots up to 16 under a load. Goes back down at idle. Im wondering if I have the wrong VR for HEI, modern alternator and electronic ignition. It is the old points one.

 

[67Dart273]

If you buy a replacement for the "points" VR it will be electronic in the same or shorter case/ enclosure. You don't have the wrong one, but it may be getting "iffy."

 

[pishta]

Wow, you found it! Too bad we still dont know what "it" was...The electronic ignition upgrade included an electronic Voltage regulator. something about a more consistant voltage to the ECU...maybe you saw that. check this out:



I measured 10K on one of my shelf units, and 122K on the one I have intalled? Anyone got another one they can test across the 2 pins at 20K on a DMM?

>>>this unit has been addressed in this post also<<<
Voltage regulator upgrade? Keep frying voltage regulators with swap

 

[smokinnjokin]

Some pics of the final harness work.

Just replaced the VR ground and starter relay ground. Both were corroded and looking rough.

 

[67Dart273]

Also make sure the ground is good clear to the battery. I use a no 4 "starter" cable (eyelet to eyelet) about a foot or so, shortest you can buy. On a smallblock there are unused holes on the rear of the driver side head. Bolt the cable to one of them, out of the way. Bolt the other end either to a through bolt and nut through the firewall, or use one of the master cylinder mount studs.

 

[smokinnjokin]

I am about ready to tear my hair out. Problem is not fixed. After my wiring job was done Last night, I took an old crappy distributor cap with corroded contacts and drilled a big hole in the side to check rotor phasing. Fired up the car and thats when I thought it was fixed, clean revs throughout the range.

This morning, I swapped the new dist cap back on (brass contacts) and the car ran like **** again. Back to the original problem. So then I suspected it was an issue with the cap. How a cap with corroded aluminum terminals is working better than a new cap with brass terminals, I don't know. But when I swapped the old cap back on it still ran like ****. And the voltage is back up to 16v at idle. I think the huge voltage draw/overcharge is related to the poor running condition. Whatever is causing this misfire and poor running condition is also drawing a huge load from the charging system. Probably the HEI trying as hard as possible to fire. When the car randomly decides to run right, the voltage drops down to 14 at idle. The conditions are definately linked.

As best as I can tell with side by side comparison, the caps are the same orientation, dimensions, relation of terminal locations, etc. So I think it was just a coincidence with the cap swaps.

Rotor phasing *appears* to be perfect. At idle with vac advance plugged, It is firing on the leading edge of the contact. It stays steadily in that spot as the car is revved up. With vacuum in, the rotor moves closer to center/trail edge of the contact.

Either way, the firing is erratic. Now I am noticing I can't actually idle as low as it should, and that the spark is intermittent at idle also.

Also make sure the ground is good clear to the battery. I use a no 4 "starter" cable (eyelet to eyelet) about a foot or so, shortest you can buy. On a smallblock there are unused holes on the rear of the driver side head. Bolt the cable to one of them, out of the way. Bolt the other end either to a through bolt and nut through the firewall, or use one of the master cylinder mount studs.

I'm going to install some new grounds today from batt cable to sheetmetal. See what that does. But it does appear that the charging system is working properly and just overcompensating for the massive draw this misfire is causing.

 

[67Dart273]

Well for starters the running voltage SHOULD NOT be 16V. Nominal 14, IE 13.8-14.2 when warmed.

How does it run if you disconnect the alternator field wire?

 

[smokinnjokin]

I replaced the ground strap to the VR, it looked fine but it had corroded heavily under the insulation. Charging system is now running normally showing 14v at idle.

As for my original condition, I'm still working through it. I think I have it narrowed down to distributor rotor phasing or ignition coil.

 

[67Dart273]

Coil would be a fair bet. In my lifetime I've had all of two coils go bad, and both went the same way--got "weak" and car ran worse until it started missing, backfireing, etc

 

[smokinnjokin]

So here's the update. Charging issue is fixed, replaced several grounds to VR, battery, block and firewall. Shows 13ish at idle and 15ish under load.

So while trying to figure out rotor phasing with my see-thru cap, I noticed that the gap from the rotor to the contacts seemed really far... took the cap off (new, brass came with the r. ehrenberg distributor) and measured and there was a 0.10" gap laterally to the cap contact and 0.15" vertically. I thought, wow that seems really far for the spark to have to jump. Measured my old (the one I cut up) cap and rotor, and determined that the cap specs are identical, but the new rotor is 0.060" shorter than the old one, and about 0.050 lower! For some reason, the contact on the end was drilled in the wrong spot or is for a different distributor. I put my old rotor in with the new cap, and the car ran noticeably better, although still having the problem. With the old rotor and new cap, the gap is now about 0.040" laterally and 0.10" vertical.

As the poor running condition/intermittent spark still persists, and I'm almost certain the distributor mechanical advance weights and reluctor phasing are jacked up. Waiting on a recurved distributor from Ray (Halifaxhops) to hopefully put this problem to bed once and for all.

 

[67Dart273]

There were "once upon a time" longer and shorter rotor contacts. I'm not sure that much would make a big difference if the rest of the system is right. Just FYI, "15 ish" volts is not correct. Didn't I post above how to check this?

Another thing you might check is for alternator AC ripple. With the car running and battery normalized, put your meter on AC volts and clip it to the alternator output stud. Recheck with lights or other loads turned on. You should read VERY little, maybe a few tenths of 1 volt

Did you ever try to run it with the alternator field disconnected?

 

[sireland67]

So here's the update. Charging issue is fixed, replaced several grounds to VR, battery, block and firewall. Shows 13ish at idle and 15ish under load.

So while trying to figure out rotor phasing with my see-thru cap, I noticed that the gap from the rotor to the contacts seemed really far... took the cap off (new, brass came with the r. ehrenberg distributor) and measured and there was a 0.10" gap laterally to the cap contact and 0.15" vertically. I thought, wow that seems really far for the spark to have to jump. Measured my old (the one I cut up) cap and rotor, and determined that the cap specs are identical, but the new rotor is 0.060" shorter than the old one, and about 0.050 lower! For some reason, the contact on the end was drilled in the wrong spot or is for a different distributor. I put my old rotor in with the new cap, and the car ran noticeably better, although still having the problem. With the old rotor and new cap, the gap is now about 0.040" laterally and 0.10" vertical.

As the poor running condition/intermittent spark still persists, and I'm almost certain the distributor mechanical advance weights and reluctor phasing are jacked up. Waiting on a recurved distributor from Ray (Halifaxhops) to hopefully put this problem to bed once and for all.

Halifaxhops will hook you up with a good working unit.
He is a great guy to deal with, there is a thread on here where he made some magazine, this year up at Carlisle.
I actually picked some parts up off him this year.

 

[KitCarlson]

The HEI wiring of pickup differs in post #27, from post #32 provided by Del. Also sounds like reluctor was flipped. Both of these conditions could track cap, might be best to replace it. Tracking is when spark carries metalic atoms from terminal, depositing on cap between terminals when phase is off. The tracking becomes a path for electrical flow, where insulator is desired.

 

[smokinnjokin]

The HEI wiring of pickup differs in post #27, from post #32 provided by Del. Also sounds like reluctor was flipped. Both of these conditions could track cap, might be best to replace it. Tracking is when spark carries metalic atoms from terminal, depositing on cap between terminals when phase is off. The tracking becomes a path for electrical flow, where insulator is desired.

The only difference between my wiring and post #32 is that I have added a relay to get full 12v from start relay terminal instead of using the stock 18g coil positive wire. I followed TrailBeast’s instructions on that one.

Also, I did some research on cap and rotor gaps and apparently in the 70's they started making the gap much bigger for smog/emissions related requirements. Supposedly cleaner running but wears out components faster. So I cleaned up the old longer rotor and will keep running that.

I have not messed with my original problem at all, waiting for new distributor to arrive.

There were "once upon a time" longer and shorter rotor contacts. I'm not sure that much would make a big difference if the rest of the system is right. Just FYI, "15 ish" volts is not correct. Didn't I post above how to check this?

Another thing you might check is for alternator AC ripple. With the car running and battery normalized, put your meter on AC volts and clip it to the alternator output stud. Recheck with lights or other loads turned on. You should read VERY little, maybe a few tenths of 1 volt

Did you ever try to run it with the alternator field disconnected?

Yes, I went through these checks but have kind of sidelined the VR problem until I can get the engine running right. As of 10 minutes ago, it is now showing the following:
Battery voltage, car off: 12.7
Running at idle 16v at battery. 2k rpm shows same.
When alternator field wire is disconnected, voltage immediately drops to 14 and steadily falls.

Here's a picture of my VR and alternator.

There are 2 terminals marked "FLD" on the back, one isn't hooked up to anything and I'm wondering if that is supposed to be a ground? They arent marked + or -, just "FLD" for both. I'm wondering if the alternator is not getting a good ground through the mount bolt to the block.