Bad MSD? Pop quiz
#1
Bad MSD? Pop quiz
So I have heard, from an unreliable source, that a MSD can go bad and you wouldn't know it. He said that it will still spark normaly, but the multipule spark and combined spark above 3000rpm would not happen. Aparently his shop sends them in to get tested whenever he's working on a car, and he says 50% or more come back bad and not under warrenty. Well the reason I bring this up is bacause I just installed my autometer shift light from my old turbo FB into my new FB but it's not working correctly. When I put in the 3k pill it lights right up at 3k and works perfectly, but with the 7k 7200 7400 7600 and 7800 pill it doesn't work at all. Now I'm using a MSD directfire with a FC coil and the autometer switched to 4 banger as before. My turbo car had the exact same setup except it was a msd dis coil so I don't think the coil is the ssue and I doubt all the 7k-8k pills are bad. Has anyone ever heard of a Msd going bad? I haven't, other than that one guy. What do you people think the problem could be???
#2
No Pistons, No Problems
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Naples, fl
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I've had 2 go bad if i remember correctly... The one worked for about 4 hours, and i could tell it went out.. well I knew something was wrong.. it wouldnt rev as smooth and it would take longer to get to high rpm.. I have one now and its worked fine.. Its possible that my other ones got wet.. who know. Hope that helps
#5
So it came down to testing. How am I going to test this? Either something is wrong with my MSD, my shift light is bad, or all the RPM Pills are bad. Easy thing was to test the light somewhere else. Well the closest working ignition I knew of was the trailing ignition. All you have to do is switch the light to 4 pissedons and hook up the signal wire to the - on the trailing coil. I did and now the light works purrfect. This leaves me with one answer something is going on with the MSD. Either it's just finally died after 6 cars and 7 years of use, or using the FC coil is making the signal erratic for some reason. I doubt that's the reason considering I've successfully used it with a DIS coil, which is essentually the same thing. So I'm left on the market for a new ignition box. Time to bump my old thread I hope I get some responses there.
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