A couple of fairly knowledgeable people, and one of them was at the tech line at Accel have told me I cannot measure this voltage with a VOM, that I need an occiliscope. What are your thoughts on this? Electricians measure AC voltage all the time in houses with just a VOM, it must give some kind of usefull, consitent information. So here I am wondering where the problem is once again. The thing that Accel likes the best is a Hall affect signal, which is just a switch that cust a source voltage on and off. The problem with the MS diagram is that it supplies only one signal wire, and Accel requires two. One of them is perhaps a ground. Also, their tech line could not give me a maximum acceptable voltage for this pick up voltage feed. I don't want to give it a signal that is going to burn something out. Any ideas? I am getting deeper and deeper into new territory here. I am basically a mechanic and not an EE. But I am willing to learn. Thank you for being willing to give advice.

Accel suggested a crank trigger. What can you tell us about both the mechanics and electronics of a crank trigger?
Sam
Sam

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Sam,

The o-scope will show you peak voltage which is different than the adjusted average or RMS voltage that a meter will give you. .2V RMS is .28V peak or for a symettrical waveform .56V peak-to-peak. The Mopar distributor will work. It did work. If you want to see if the ECM's ignition input bit the dust you could pick up a Hall Effect distributor and wire that in to see if it produces an RPM reading. Too bad 3.9 V6s are semi-odd fire. Otherwise you could put the guts of one of those distributors in the /6 distributor. The firing interval difference between banks in the 3.9 is 8° BTW so don't even think abut it.

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Joshua

Why would the hall effect pick up work if this one doesn't? If I read their literature right, when you select the ignition type, it just changes the wave form the input expects to see. Accel is telling me they don;t want the ECM back for testing until I have put a scope on it to verify that the mag pickup is insufficient. But, he did not tell me what you just did, that the differential between the up and down on the sine wave is what counts. ARe you sure that is true? Pardon me for being so dumb here, and thanks again for trying to help me out. Have I said before I have a lot to learn? Who makes a Hall effects distributor for the slant?
Sam

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Did you ever get the other pick up in. You just dont see to many mopar pick ups dying tho. Have you went back over your grounds(you may have mentioned this if so sorry). You may even have to move the grounds to diff locations. And as I said before did you check to see if the coil fried(even if its new) the coils can die easy on these setups if the time for saturation is not setup right. I have seen MSD coils die in two minutes. If you lived in my town I could scope it for you but that dont help tho. If you know any shops close, many have scopes these days that are hand held. You could even take the dissy to them any could scope it. As far as that goes the AutoZones have a tester to test that pickup & even load it to see if it heats up and breaks down.

just thinking out loud here, I know it gets crazy after awail.

Last time I checked it the coil had good spark. That was a couple nights ago, and it hasn;t been asked to do anything since.

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I've been kind of half-heartedly following this thread over the past several days and I have to ask, are you sure the problem is not in the Accel box itself? It seems to me that you've been back and forth over everything else several times. The fact that it once ran but quit suddenly leads me to the conclusion that an electronic component has probably failed and that it's not an incompatablility with the distributor.

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David Kight
'62 Valiant Signet, White
'98 Dodge Dakota
'06 Jeep Liberty

Growing older is unavoidable but growing up is strictly optional.

Dakight, I think you are problably right. Everything does check out, and I am told the Mopar mag pickup distributor is the gold standard in the industry and is the protoytype for many aftermarket units, including Mallory. On Monday, I am having the car towed to an Accel dealer/ install/speed shop 14 miles from here. He has the experience to determine if the box is bad, and will send it back if it is not good. Only problem, the car may not be back in time for my visit from Sandy. Sandy, we can still have a good time!

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Good luck.

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David Kight
'62 Valiant Signet, White
'98 Dodge Dakota
'06 Jeep Liberty

Growing older is unavoidable but growing up is strictly optional.