I bought a MP orange box a couple of months ago because my stone age NAPA box failed me. Well the other morning I went to start my car and smoke started boiling out from under the hood . Turned out my pretty little box had smoked itself and melted all of that rubbery stuff that is in the back of the box. Called the Dodge dealersip I got it from and they refuse to exchange it, even though it is only a few months old. I went to NAPA and bought a little $15 box which is working perfectly and has a lifetime warranty. So now I am stuck with a $30 dollar smokebox that is painted a very pretty shade of orange. So Dan and all of you experts out there, is there a way to rebuild this thing, and why did it fail so early?

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82 D150-225/727
02 Dakota-3.9/5 speed
87 GMC C7000-8.2 Detroit Diesel/5+2

Oof. I donno why it failed! Did you use the correct ballast resistor?

Electronic stuff can fail. "Get Real - Get Mopar" doesn't always work out.

Can it be rebuilt? Sure. Any of the companies that rebuilds ECMs could rebuild it. Is it worth doing? Naw. Cost you more than four or five new boxes, for sure. I don't think there's any difference except the paint colour between an orange box and a plain ol' ordinary replacement box—I think the "high performance" nature of the box was mostly in the mind of Larry Sheppard, who screwed-up the Mopar Performance program about 20 years ago by discontinuing a lot of needed stuff and populating the line with reboxed ordinary stuff ("9:1" slant-6 pistons that were just plain old ordinary replacements, anyone?).

If the orange box in my '62 fries, I'll put in an HEI module and lose the ballast resistor.

I put a new one on my '84 D100 a few years ago. After 100 miles, I noticed it would not run over 60mph in 3rd gear of a 833OD trans and 3.21 gear. It started this after what seemed to be a pop from the motor. Before the pop, I know I had it up to 70mph in 3rd. I just thought the problem was bad valve springs.
700 miles later, the truck quit running on the way home, I thought the timing chain, with 125,000 miles on it, gave out. Well, it turned out to be the nearly new MP orange box, not the chain. I had a spare, installed it, now it will run at least 80mph in 3rd gear!! The box had been bad since the first 100 miles.
I've had a orange box on a running Challenger that had the potting material oozing out of the back when I bought it in '85. When I sold it in '93, the box was still working. From what I understand, the older orange boxes were made for MP by Borg Warner at a cost of $6. A bean counter found a supplier in China that would make them for $3. Since then, there have been many failures reported with the newer orange boxes.
HP boxes can be found from the auto ignition suppliers, like Borg Warner, Standard, etc. I've been replacing my street car ignitions with the box, coil and ballast from FBO Systems, it's a little pricey, but the best there is without going to more costly CD ignition such as MSD6, Mallory Hy-Fire, Crane Hi6.

Cecil

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Slant Cecil