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green1

green1

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Well this is a mind blower. New MSD in a "new" 69 Charger 440. Aftermarket tach, new oem tach; key on, supposed to show msd 6 digital rev limiter rpm. All over the place. Checked wires, called msd; net a tach adapter. $70, still the same, Talked to tech twice. Called back; The voltage on the grey wire should be 1 to 5 volts, we get 5.1 volts. Answer, our bad , send it back, rebuild, and with in a month will ship it back. .1 Volt? 1 month? WTF?

New unit, same crap. Now get this; senior tech: oh yeah, we had problems with then at first. That tach wire would open the fuel injectors, so we disabled it.

Think about it. They didn't change/add instructions, didn't tell the lower people answering the phone?

And are still selling a unit that they know is bad. Tsk Tsk.

I think I like my Mallory better every day.
 
Update; the engine was fine, for a 100 mile test run tuesday, even cranked it up to 120. Getting good fuel pressure now, but had a vibration about 85 up, full throttle, started pulling a little slower. Brought it back, seemed ok. Then took it for a short low speed drive.

Crap! it was doing 25, started popping out exhaust and carb, like running out of gas, pulled over, it belched so much blue oil smoke out of the hood that we thought it had blown. No oil, fired back up, and ran for 800 feet, started popping and dying again. Got it home; Fired up, good in idle, and neutral revs, then popping through the carb again, then wouldn't start again.

Checked everything again, almost acting like it jumped timing, no. Called different msd tech; get this load of bs:

"we still have the problem of tach not reading rev limiter rpm". " we disabled that". Us, "not according to the instructions, or the last tech we talked to". Wishy washy reply.

us "the red light goes out 2 seconds after key on", " that's what it does"; us, "read your own directions". Reply- directions wrong, we re-programmed the chip. About at this point, since it is on speaker-phone, the owner is trying to calm me down, before I say something.

He fix was; trigger wires too close to other wiring, I asked, how far apart? answer- 6 ". I said, ok, where the wires go into the plug of the box, how to keep the 6"? silence.

Then he asked how it was grounded. Told him, Big black to block, battery to block, redundant battery cable from block to k member, 10 gauge to firewall. Guess what? a block is not an acceptable ground.

Really more than po'ed, started moving the trigger wires, which went through a grommet in the firewall, which was good.

Now this is what we found; the violettrigger wire had someway, melted throught the outer hard sheath, and it's insulation, and saw bare wire, like it was grounding over a period of 3 months, 300 miles.

Not wear frayed, melted from the inside. Every copper strand was there, and was shiney. Replaced the wire, and runs good.

Any thoughts? Oh, to digress; we fixed the wire; popping, let it sit for 10 min, then fired like a champ. The next event, I pity the msd rep.
 
This was a little hard to follow, but a bare wire with all its integrity will function just as well as a wire that is insulated, unless it is grounding somewhere. Not sure how you fixed the wire, but if it wasn't rubbing anything under the dash you may still have your problem.
 
Autotronics (MSD) seems to have many problems that could be fixed by better management of design and operations. GM tuners have had many failures with their very expensive upgraded LS coils (>$600/set). I have heard similar of their more standard offerings. As one small data point, my company ordered an MSD box specially configured to self-pulse for a non-automotive application. They sent us a regular box and the special box to a regular customer. We never heard if that blew up some drag racer's engine. However, I don't know if Accel, AEM, or others are much better. Many horror stories out there.
 
magnumdart said:
This was a little hard to follow, but a bare wire with all its integrity will function just as well as a wire that is insulated, unless it is grounding somewhere. Not sure how you fixed the wire, but if it wasn't rubbing anything under the dash you may still have your problem.
Click to expand...

It had to have been an intermittent ground. We think the guys that pulled out the a/c under the dash did it. New wire, runs great.
 
Sorrry, I was so po'ed, and am not going to do it over. The main thing was; MSD tech sucks. Different tech, different answer;Then told that "we had a problem and changed the chip" Oops, forgot to change the directions.
 
Hot darn, my butt is still frosted. Turn around under warranty, one month; can't wait that long, bought new box. Same thing. Tech just reads of a programmed list. Nobody has one in there car, has never installed one, have no clue what it even does, or what you are talking about.

Like calling tech for Hewlett Packard, and talking to the Indian, that has the slightest grasp on the english language.
 
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