As cool as these MSD boxes are, unfortunately- they are not magic. They do the same thing that a distributor does with its mechanical and vacuum advance mechanisms. They only thing "magic" about them is that you no longer need to play around with the distributor and springs to get your timing fine tuned.
For those of you who arent familiar with them this is how they work...
All the MSD box does is retard (delay) the ignition point. You lock out the dizzy so there is no mechanical advance, then time your engine as advanced as you want it and lock it down. A simple example would be an initial timing of 15* with total of 35*....Lock distributor down timed at 35* and program the box to retard 20* of timing out of the motor at idle (to give you initial of 15), then you can program how fast and at what rpm you want to put the timing back in to get to full advance of 35*.
There are several inputs you can use to trigger other toys, as well as a start retard function. As my brother mentioned, I am using nitrous on my basically stock 383. I use one of the inputs to retard my timing whenever the solonoids are activated to keep the cylinder pressures from melting pistons. I am also playing with simulating vacuum advance (see limitations below), a capability these have when you add a map sensor to the mix (also handy for turbo or blower motors as you can use 2 or 3 bar sensors as well).
Rather than lug the laptop around with him to swap between tunes, Mopar to ya could just as well install a switch in his car that triggers the MSD box to pull a preprogrammed amount of timing out of his car when he is using low octane gas.
There is a limitation to these boxes. The most timing they can pull out is 25* so that could limit some agressive tunes with large additional inputs (like a healthy simulated vacuum advance). I have my dizzy locked at 45* as I try to get my "vacuum advance" curve right. With only 25* of timing available to pull out, there are occasional kickbacks on startup as the spark sometimes jumps to the next tower. This can be remedied by phasing the rotor differently. As far as Mopar stuff goes- aftermarket distributors are, from what I have found, the only ones that are easily phase-able. I have found no stock style rotors that are phase-able, but have seen reluctors that are re-clocked (by E-booger) that may serve the same purpose.
