duowing

Alright, here's one thing that occurred to me. I was wondering if say the original ignition goes bad would this cause a problem with the MSD or Mallory? From the way the instructions look, is that the wires from the original ignition feed the new unit? So if it were to fail, would that cause a problem or no?

NismoPick

Indeed... The Mallory box still receives it's signal from the orig ignitor unit.

duowing

Alright quick question. I finally stopped being lazy about it, and since I've got just about everything else where I want it. I drilled the holes for the Mallory Ignition box and the MSD Tach Adapter, I have everything hooked up except for the black and red wires that run to direct battery voltage. This is mainly directed at anyone who has hooked up an MSD/Mallory. Anyway I was wondering what any of you guys did, I put the box over by where the windshield wiper reservoir bottle was and the wires from the ignition box to the battery aren't long enough. I could just extend them and run it to the battery, I was wondering what you guys did to make it look a little cleaner? I managed to run all the wires that go to the tach adapter and coil through driver's side fender so that hid everything and made a cleaner install. I still kinda suck at wiring so that's why I'm asking.

SHADY280

i had to extend the batt wires. i hooked the ground right to the intake manifold where theres that bolt with the other grounds. i made a bracket for my msd to sit on where the old coil was, then put the coil **** up where the headlight washer was. oil filled coils should be mounted facing up if you can. the set of wires that runs from the dizzy to the msd may be old and brittle, you may want to run new ones, i found that someone spliced mine, and now its causing problems. also cut off all the connectors that msd sends with the box, they come appart and cause massive detonation problems. it turns out iff the wire has resistance it advances the timing. nothing like givener up a hill and it decides to have 30 deg timing at idle!!! solder and heat shrink everything, trust me and save yourself the headache heres some pix

duowing

Alright, I figured I'd have to do something like that. In the Turbo cars the coil is mounted facing up rather than sideways. My original wires going to the coil were actually in good shape since I had replaced the ignition not that long ago.

duowing

Ok I can't figure this out. I have everything hooked up as the instructions, I have the tach adapter in, but when cranking I have no spark. I followed the instructions with the mallory and turned the ignition to on and grounded the white wire and the coil wire, the coil wire was sparking to ground with ignition on, but while cranking there is no spark. Would this maybe mean that my direct connection to the battery is messed up? With those quick connectors though, I'm able to disconnect the Mallory and hook my stock ignition right back up and the car fires right up.

SHADY280

check the tach adapter wiring again. its was the suspect on my car. also make sure your wires are hooked correctly + and - they kinda are misleading

duowing

So far here's what I've done. I went ahead and extended the battery black wire and ran it right to the negative battery teminal. Now the weird thing. If I have the ignition hooked up to the tach adapter, then with ignition on and grounding the white wire I get spark. I unhooked the tach adapter and just ran the red to the old positive, white to old negative, orange to positive terminal, black to negative terminal. Now with ignition on and grounding wire I don't get spark.


Ok I had the ignition on, I was going through and running voltage checks on every wire. I was able to find voltage going from every wire to ground except for the battery negative. I mean I may be wrong, but shouldn't the battery negative wire be acting as the ground for the battery positive wire? So I should see voltage across that line?

duowing

Shady how do you have yours wired? That might be my problem. I'm looking all over the place and it almost looks like I have mine wired up backwards. I took the black with white stripe, which was originally the negative coil wire and I hooked that up to white and the blue wire which was the original positive and hooked that to red, but I'm finding diagrams that look like it's going the other way? I guess I might as well try it out.

EDIT: Found a post on HybridZ outlining it and describing how the igniter works. Anyway it's odd because the black/white wire is apparently the switched 12v which is what I need to feed the Mallory. Even though the Blue wire that goes to the positive coil terminal is apparently not a hot wire, but apparently acts as a ground on every pulse from the distributor, or something along those lines. It's weird and confusing to me as I mentioned I'm still a newbie to the whole wiring concept, but I'll switch these wires around in the morning and see what happens. Which now I could see why you'd say that the instructions for this is misleading.

Update: IT LIVES! After reading through the posts and tracing wiring diagrams for half the night I figured it out. Now the only problem is my tach adapater. The car runs with it hooked up, but would not run with the diode in place. I think I may have ruined the diode. I'll have to mess around with it and hopefully get my Tach working.

NismoPick

w00t!

duowing

Does it matter which way the diode is wired in? I still can't get the car to start when I put the diode in? One moment I was getting lower voltage on the line after the diode, then I wasn't so I may have ruined it. Anyone know how I can get another? I think the mallory came with one, but I'm not sure how I'd hook it up. It's the diode with no connectors or anything.

I was reading the directions for the Mallory and it mentions that a diode is made to allow voltage to only flow one way, that's probably why. I have it hooked up backwards...

Edit: Alright...I hooked up the diode the other way. Car will crank, the tach is registering, but the car won't start with that diode in place. I don't get it!

duowing

Finally! Car starts with tach! I pulled apart the diode that came with the tach adapter. It was indeed broken, or just sort of touching so it was enough to get my tach to register but not enough to conduct to get the car to start. I took the one from the Mallory and I put it in the crimp connectors the same way the MSD one was, but I cut this one down so it was real short and used the plastic that fits over the connectors to house the diode so it would have that added plastic to help prevent it from getting bent and broken.

NismoPick

Nooissee! How's it drive?

duowing

So far it's pretty good. I think I was expecting a big difference, but it definitely seems like it starts smoother, idles smoother, and just acceleration and everything feels smoother.

SHADY280

hmm never had the diode in mine. but yeah i figured you had something backward, sorry havent been on here for some time. ive been busy working on the house.

duowing

No problem. I know the wiring is a little different for the Turbo. Shady did you use the white wire to trigger the MSD? I know alot of people have mentioned on HybridZ is that with the N/A you can eliminate the whole ignition module and run the MSD via the magnetic pickup from the Dizzy.