MSD issue

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Cope

Fusing with fire
Joined
Oct 20, 2009
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San Jose, Ca.
I fired up pops car today, fired up nice. I ran it for a few to check for leaks and shut it down.
Now no spark at the plugs. The coil is firing but no fire at the plugs.

What do the 2 wires into the distributor even do? I would think fire INTO the cap should equal fire OUT of the cap?

I've just about had it with MSD. I though I'd ran into every problem you could have with there stuff but this is a new one to me.

The box is new 6AL digital, distributer is new pro billet, wires are new and coil is new.

Any ideas why it would just stop sparking at the plugs? When we were cranking it I went to pull some timing out and it shocked the piss out of me then nothing.
 
I had an older MSD unit with a laser type trigger.

It gave me fits until I did some research & discovered that.

Once I knew that, found the trigger, cleaned the dust off with a Q-tip & all good.
 
spark in does not equal spark out if the rotor is not aligned (phased) with a spark tower at time of fire OR the cap button/rotor contact is broken. Align the rotor to a wire contact and scrape the white wire of the MSD onto a ground. You should get a false trigger from the white wire and a spark out the wire terminal your lined up with. Ive seen cap buttons shredded by the rotor if the cap is not clipped on 100%
 
Also (especially with the high energy of MSD) suspect a bad coil wire, IE test spark with another wire, or ROTOR PUNCH THROUGH. The spark may have "drilled" through the rotor to the shaft below, carbonized, and become conductive.
 
Rotor burnt through, pull the rotor and look at it from the bottom and see if its arcing through to the shaft
 
Rotor burnt through, pull the rotor and look at it from the bottom and see if its arcing through to the shaft
Yes, I had this happen on a mitsubishi V6 distributor. I was lost trying to find out WTF happened.
 
Happened to mine a while ago. It is the laser sensor i the rotor. It's $106 bucks for a new one from mds. Piece of cake.
 
Maybe...could this apply to yours?

"...MSD Pro billet distributor, problems

No fire all the sudden and no doubt I found the problem, well one more.
MSD knows about the problem, they're adding a coating over the triggers now. It's caused by Ionized air they say, understandable since they do carry a substantial arc. They recommend drilling two 3/8" holes at rotor height in 180* opposition so the rotor will act like a fan. I say seal it and purge it with CO2 or Argon, but how? The distributor, cap and rotor looks like **** with about 500 miles on it, I never start it and shut it off unless it's "completely" warmed up.
After cleaning I did get good numbers and the magnetic trigger will fire the MSD off on the counter but while turning over it fails, no spark. They say clear coat the trigger fingers and pickup to protect them, but people are also are painting them. I ordered a new pick up..."
 
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