[Fot] MSD box

[Henry Morrison]

Removed my MSD and recieved the bonus of weight reduction.  Engine didn't seem to miss it. I think their real benefit is only realized with a forced induction setup, so far not legal for vintage. 
 
Henry Morrison  Albuquerque, NM
 
To: toodamnfunky at comcast.net; fot at autox.team.net
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 2015 18:39:49 +0200
Subject: Re: [Fot] MSD box
From: fot at autox.team.net


Dear Listers, interesting to read that about the MSD boxes. I heard in the past MSD has a very high failure rate (up to 50%). So those troubles do confirm the reliability issues of MSDSo I never bought or installed one but went for the Crane boxes, which are just great and run like a clock all the time.Cheers!AlexCamolettiDe : Fot [mailto:fot-bounces at autox.team.net] De la part de Jim Gray via Fot
Envoyé : mardi 7 avril 2015 15:08
À : fot at autox.team.net
Objet : Re: [Fot] MSD box We had the exact same problem on one of our spits without MSD in Colorado. “When I pull either #1 or #4 plug wire she runs fine, dips down a bit in RPM, but if I pull #2 or #3 she almost dies” We didn’t move the timing light sensor wire around though.We have another spitfire that did one of the most bizarre things I’ve ever seen. We were trying to sort out another ignition miss problem and decided it wasn’t going to get fixed at that moment.Dan, the owner decided to put it back in his pit, put the hood down and fired it up. It seemed to run a bit worse than when we started so the hood came back up while it was running.The distributor cap didn’t get put back on and it was running! The cap wasn’t even close to the distributor, it was almost a foot away and you could see the arc dancing all over the inside of the cap. If someone had told me that story and I hadn’t seen it for myself I would have called BS.All I can say is that was one hot coil, how it fired in any kind of order that would allow it to run is still beyond my understanding.As far as why a car will still seem to run unaffected by pulling #’s 1 or 4 is still a puzzle to me.Some people actually have success with an adjustable timing light on and MSD equipped car ( if that’s what your using ) I never did. MSD say’s no. I had to go back to a fixed timing light because the timing was all over the place, hence the dual spark up to 3K rpm.Even with the fixed timing light I had trouble timing the car at the Kastner Cup at Road America. The MSD unit completely failed the next weekend out. Now I keep a spare in the box.The point I’m getting at is in this case it might not be the MSD box since we had the same problem with a non-MSD car.jim g  From: Fot [mailto:fot-bounces at autox.team.net] On Behalf Of Steve Smith via Fot
Sent: Monday, April 06, 2015 7:07 PM
To: don at dcphotos.com; FOT at autox.team.net
Subject: Re: [Fot] MSD box I've seen that exact issue on a very fast TR4.  Drove us nuts until we tried a new box.  They will repair it very cheaply as I recall.  Remember how NASCAR's always have TWO on board??  -----Original Message-----
From: don--- via Fot <fot at autox.team.net>
To: fot <fot at autox.team.net>
Sent: Mon, Apr 6, 2015 4:55 pm
Subject: [Fot] MSD boxThis Spitfire that was “pawned” off on me has a MSD Digital 6A box in it.  When I pull either #1 or #4 plug wire she runs fine, dips down a bit in RPM, but if I pull #2 or #3 she almost dies.  I put my timing gun on #1 wire, she fires at 15 °BTDC and same if I put the timing gun sensor on the #4 wire.  When I put the sensor on either #2 or #3 wire, it shows it firing all over the place, them seem to settle down to 15°btdc and then goes crazy again, settles down.   Not sure if this is the MSD box or not but I thought I might get some answers here.  I did find that the rotor cap was dragging on the Pertronix Ignitor module inside the distributor. I swapped out rotor caps but still no luck.  Don  DON COUCH PHOTOGRAPHY (512)-680-3540  _______________________________________________fot at autox.team.net http://www.fot-racing.com Donate:http://www.team.net/donate.htmlArchive: http://www.team.net/archiveForums:http://www.team.net/forumsUnsubscribe/Manage:http://autox.team.net/mailman/options/fot/gt6steve@aol.com  
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