Last week i installed an HEI in my 70' Dart. All seemed to be good, i got her timed right. the parts i used was a generic cont. unit bought off ebay, a Flame thower, 40,000v 1.5ohm coil, and a basic reman. dist from Oreilly's. Removed the ballast all together..Got her timed perfect and she ran great until today...if a little is good, more must be better right?

Today I installed a Standard Motor CH410x dist. cap and an Echlin rotor MO3000. I gapped my plugs to .055". Fired her up and checked the timing, all looks good again. she idled perfectly for 5 minutes or so...no problems it seems.

Still, more must be better right? i just had one last thing to do before taking her for a test run. I had an Accel model#35361 performance cont. module to replace the generic basic one with. did that. verified connections were all correct before fire.

i fired her and she had no problem with just the slightest crank of the starter. She idled for about one minute before just shutting off. Like someone turned the car off, or I pulled the coil wire.

Without doing much tshooting I wanted to get opinions on what went wrong and why?

Not having parts that match each other, may give you trouble. The coils normally used with a standard type HEI ignition module, should have an internal primary resistance of 0.5 ohm. (measured between the negative and positive input posts) In your first setup, you used a coil with much higher resistance, it may have put a too high strain on the module.

What coil resistance is needed for the Accel module? Did you touch the module and coil after the sudden stops, were any of them very hot?

Is the module and coil getting enough power?

Olaf.

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Aspenized

Well here's the update. i have confirmed that the Accel is not functioning properly. I installed the cont' module that i had in there this morning and she fired right up again.

Olaf thanks for your help. i have heard that not enough power going to the cont. module can blow them. no neither of them were hot. Pertronix actually using a 3ohm coil in 4cyl and 6cyl though. so I thought with the 1.5ohm I wouldn't have a problem. My part number on the flame thrower is 40011. As you can see from the following:

http://www.pertronix.com/prod/ig/flame/coils/chart.aspx

it says this is for 8cyl only. So maybe that's where i f'd up. Didn't do enough research before buying my coil.

So if i were to use one of the ignitorII coils I should be ok?

As long as it is an e-core coil marked with having 0.5 ohm primary resistance, it should be good enough. Honestly, if you have a stock or high performance SlantSix intended for the street, and dont race and dont have a turbo/blower setup, stick with the reasonably priced parts that are easy to replace, it is good stuff! Any module and e-core coil for a Chevy or Ford is plenty good. You find the numbers in the HEI Electronic Ignition Retrofit How-To thread in the 'electric' FAQ. You can see what I use for my supersix Aspen in the thread Gm Hei Module Conversion Troubles. I have also added a set of NGK UR45IX (for 75->up heads only) spark plugs, and it is starting and running extremely good.

I have not seen these flashy, new web pages from Petronics before, they are using vital info very sparingly! An e-core coil is what you should use, but looking for some real, useful info at the Pertroncs site is a joke! What is 'ultra low primary resistance values'? Compared to what?

If you absolutely want/need a high performance setup, you could buy both a module and coil from Pertronics, or Mallory or Accel or..., as long as they say that the pieces are made to be used together.

Best of luck, please tell us what you end up with, we need feedback!

Olaf.

BTW, use a relay to ensure max voltage - as shown in the links - to feed the module and the positive side of the coil.

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Aspenized

Note that 0.055" is a very big plug gap. Probably too big. Back it off to 0.045" to avoid rapid wear and tear on your cap and rotor and reduce the likelihood of problems with arcover and other problems in the secondary.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Olaf, Great Thanks for the input...It definately must have been to much resistance that killed the cont.module. However i've seen the setup with both the E-coil and the can. i've got a buddy who has been running his with a .7ohm prim/10.5kohm secondary with this control module for sometime, however i'm willing to do more research on the E-coil for sure, so thanks again for your input.

SSDan,
I've seen many of your posts. In fact, my cap and rotor selection came from a post where you recommended them....I guess the conflicting info is that I have heard from a number of slant 6 builders to gap @.045" upon install of the HEI. But when the larger electrode rotor is installed you should gap even more for a larger spark. i didn't know how far to go so i decided to start with .055", thinking if I can't get a solid spark I'd know and back it of to .050"...I didn't know of excessive wear and tear on the rest of the system if the gap is too big. I guess the question really lies in what's better, a stronger spark that is a bit smaller, or a larger spark that is a bit weaker, which gives off the most complete burn? Thanks Dan!

Please forgive me if anything I say sounds stupid but I'm a very theory-oriented guy. So often times i want to know why one thing is better than the other...Therefore, I may ask "why" to some stupid things. Furthermore, this is the first time I have messed with an old slant 6 in the sense of swapping out 1 type of ignition for another. Thanks again!!!

All,
Here is the diagram i used along with my final hook up along with the final pic. I hope this turns out since it's the first time I've attempted to post pics on this site.
[/img]https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=1bf066cf177e17c6&Bsrc=Photomail&Bpub=SDX.Photos&id=1BF066CF177E17C6%21348&sff=1[img]

[/img]https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=1bf066cf177e17c6&Bsrc=Photomail&Bpub=SDX.Photos&id=1BF066CF177E17C6%21342&sff=1[/url]

Sorry mwhitman717, your pics are not visible. Use [img]image_address[/img] for vieweing - no spaces allowed, except inside picture comments text. Remember to set the permission values for all to view the pics. You should also check if the address you gave is the correct one, when I manually entered that address, I only came to some windoze program login window.

The coil with a primary resistance of 0.7 should work OK, the type of coil is irrelevant - the main issue is that it should be able to spark your plugs. The e-core coil is a more modern construction, no messy oil inside, and it has a somewhat higher efficiency rating. The principle of how a coil works, is a very old one anyway.

Double check your wires, start with the ground wires.

Yes, I know you did, now go do it again!

Olaf.

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Aspenized

Not conflicting, but misunderstood. 0.045" is the larger gap setting to use with the good cap and rotor.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Olaf, The place that sold me the coil is allowing me to change to the 0.6ohm, 45Kv can swapping straight so I'll go with that. Checked all my grounding again and all looks good.
Dan, ok, i will bump them back. I was under the impression that they are taken to .045 with the install of the HEI and even more with the install of the cap and rotor i had purchased. i must have misunderstood.

Thank you guys again for your help!!!
-Mike

Mike, I am not sure, but the most likely reason the picture link doesn't work - it is correctly set up now - is that it still is a link to a log-in page for some windoze program, and not directly to a picture file.

Tell us how it runs!

Olaf.

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Aspenized

I had a similar problem with my HEI system working for a while (couple of minutes) sometimes and then stopping completely. Wait a while and then it would work again. Sometimes it would go months and then out of the blue, it would stop. The only consistent thing was that if it was going to stop, it would happen after a few minutes of running. After a long time of troubleshooting and swapping every part, the gremlin finally raised it's head. Turned out the nut I was using to ground the module was for some reason not grounding it completely all the time. I happened to bump the ground wire while it was running and voila, not running. Love when that happens. So I added a second ground wire run directly to the block and haven't had that happen since. I think the bad ground caused the module to get hot and turn itself off. Once it cooled off, it would go again for a few minutes before overheating and shutting off. (depending on how long I waited, it would run longer or shorter, but never more than about 5 minutes).

My 2 brain cells.

D

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64 Valiant

drrw, I don't remember the exact amp draw of the standard HEI modules, but I have seen Pertronics versions listing up to 8 amps. draw. That creates a lot of heat! Using an example of an average 4~5 amp module, the power consumed will generate somewhere in the region of 35-60 Watts of heat. That is a lot of heat for a small module contact area to disperse, so using a good heat sink, and paste, is necessary. With faulty wiring, no wonder your module needs a little break now and then!

On my HEI, I have used a separate ground wire from the module to the bolt that attaches the ground strap between engine and body, after cleaning all the contact points and bolts with a steel brush. I also use a relay to power the module.

Olaf.

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Aspenized

I have the OEM GM heatsink (I have the coil/module mount that I believe Dan originally posted photos of http://www.slantsix.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15779 ), radio shack paste, relay, correct size wires.
The thing that was hard to figure was that it would work fine for days or months and then all of a sudden, pffft. There was zero difference in how it ran when it was going to quit and how it ran when it wasn't. The only commonality is that it would only do it from a cold start. If it ran fine on the way somewhere, it would be fine on the way back. Much nicer now that it doesn't randomly die. I still have the old orange box stuff sitting in there just in case, since it came in so handy when it was acting up. I'm sure it will never die again since now I have a redundant system in addition to backup ballast resistor for the old system and backup coil and backup module for the new system. It's been fine since January 1 so all is good in that regard.

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64 Valiant