Hi Guys. I have had the MSD6 for so many years, that I cannot remember what kind of signal the Mopar distriutor sends. I just hooked it up to the MSD and forgot about it. Now I am trying to interface it with the Accel DFI GenVII system by patching it into their ignition harness with a jumper cable. The distributor harness is set up for sequential, but can be used as batch fire with the normal distibutor hook ups, but I am not sure what wires to hook up. The wires that come out of the Accel harness for the spark timing are for a Hall affect distributor, and have three wires. These are:1), hot 12 volts switched ignition voltage, 2) signal lead, 3) ground.
Does the Mopar distributor see ground on one side? Does any of this question make sense? My understanding is the Mopar distributor just passes a reluctor past a magnet wich would make it put out a pulse of alternating current. In that case one wire must be ground, and not 12 volts. In that case, I should leave the 12 volt switched ignition voltage out of the mix. Am I right in this thinking? I cannot find a wring diagram anywhere in Accel's literature for their Dual Sync distributor, so I am kind of on my own to figure this out. Thanks for your opinions here.
Sam

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Magnetic trigger distributors like the factory piece are, technically speaking, of the variable reluctance type. Hopefully your EFI can use this type of input. A Hall Effect switch needs power, ground (return) and a signal wire. None of these can be connected to your distributor.

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Ok, just read a little about the Gen 7 DFI. You can use a magnetic pickup distributor. I'm thinking you need to do some rewiring.

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Joshua

Thanks for t hinking about this Josh. I have been told I can just wire an adapter cable between the Accel Hall effects plug at the end or their harness, and the Mopar distributor by just leaving one wire out. It seems like it must be the 12 volt one that gets left out.

Accel provides a harness for the magnetic type pcikup, but the plan calls for eventually getting the Accel distributor so I can go sequential. This is an attempt to use the Mopar distributor for the interim, and then switch over to sequential when I get the distributor figured out for the slant. AT that point I could just take out the adapter, and plug in the Accel distributor.

The trick set up would be if I can make an Accel distributor function in the slant. That is a matter of space more than anything, I think. One of Rance's buddies is supposed to be playing with the Accel distributor to see if he can get it to work on a slant, but hasn't come up with anything yet. I will call Accel's tech line tomorrow and see if they can help me out.
Does anyone know if the Mopar electronic distributor has what is essentialy a ground on one side of the two wires that go to the distributor? I don;t think I have any of my old wiring diagrams anymore. My stuff is so modified that the Mopar manuals are pretty meaningless at this point. The thing is, it iIremember it right, the wires go into the Mopar ignition box, and it is pretty much a "black box" in the diagram. I don;t know what goes on in there electronically speaking. The same goes for the MSD, they just plug into the box, and from there on, the function is not spelled out in diagrams that are available to the ordinary consumer. This is alot of words, but thanks for listening, and thinking about it.
Sam

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The answer I got back from Rance, is that the Mopar distributor wants the contacts hooked up that are ground and signal, and leaving out the 12 volts ignition signal. I'll keep you informed of what happens when I get it started. Thanks for paying attention. Sam

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Hall Effect and variable reluctance are very different signal types. Hall Effect is a simple on-off square wave while the variable reluctance is a changing AC wave form. I would be very surprised if the same circuit in the Gen 7 would or could accept both signal types.

The pickup coil in the Mopar distributor does not have a ground. In fact if either side of the pickup coil is shorted to ground the pickup coil is bad and should be replaced.

Ok, did a little more reading. This time it was of the actual Gen 7 instructions.

"Inductive Pick-Up (IPU) or Hall Effect distributors, Non-sequential mode
...Next, connect the distributor to the 8-pin ignition connector on the main wiring harness, using the IPU adapter supplied with your kit..."

So is where is your IPU (inductive pick-up) adapter? You even wrote: "Accel provides a harness for the magnetic type pcikup." You need this harness if your are going to use this distributor.

You don't have to buy the Accell distributor to go sequential. You can modify your existing distributor and use it as a cam position sensor along with a crank trigger for crank position sensing.

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Joshua

Thanks again Joshua for thinking about this. The main harness is the same for all distributors, and what changes is the adapter that goes from there to the distributor. In the case of the IPU style, it only uses 2 of the 8 wires possible. What Rance is instructing me to do is a workaround that uses the Dual Sync adapter, and jumpers only the two wires that are used in the IPU connector.

In the set up program you specify whether you are using sequential, staged batch, or batch fire. I suppose this choice changes the functrions ot the wires in the ignition portion of the harness . I have not read of Rance's work around in any of thier literature. It is apparently a "trick" that Rance knows how to do. He was trying to save me the cost of two seperate adapters. I would be interested in getting sequential figured out here, but I need to know more than I do now, by far. I will wait a little bit and see how Rance comes along with his adaption of the dual sync distributor as that would problably be the simplest route to take. I don;t mind spending a littlel bit extra money to get their distributor. If there is a better way to do it, I am open to the better way too. Have I said before, "I need to learn more about this"?

Thanks again for looking into this. The weakest part of this system by far is the lack of good wiring diagrams. They have schematics of individual harness adapters, but not how they all go together with the components around it. If you go on line, which it sounds like you have done, and click on their instuction manual for the Accel 6a ignition, the instructions for that are quite complete, and show digrams of how to hook it up about every type of car ignition on the market. The instructions for the DFI are not like that. This 6a ignition looks exactly like an MSD unit, and I suspect it is. In fact it was this on line instruction sheet for the 6a that showed me how to get the MSD wired into the ACcel Gen VII ignition.

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I'm sure you could make up your own adapter to use the inductive pickup capability of the Gen 7, but as you inferred, knowing which 2 pins of the 8 present is the key. My position is that none of the 3 pins for the Hall Effect switch are likely to be shared with the inductive pickup, but I could be and hope for the sake of expense that I'm wrong. The proper adapter is only $33.77 from Rance.

Since you're getting your stuff from Rance I'd make him pull out the Hall Effect adapter and the inductive adapter and compare the pinouts.

If you want sequential then you need some type of crank position sensor that provides 3 impulses per crank revolution and a cam position sensor that does 1 pulse per cam revolution. The easiest way to do this is with a crank trigger on the damper and a distributor with only one tooth on the reluctor wheel.

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Joshua

Wow, that does sound rather easy. But then I would be back to figuring out which wires to hook up. Have you, or do you know anyone who has done the crank sensor on a slant? Where would I look to see how to adapt, fabricate, modify, or otherwise hot rod something together for a crank sensor for a slant? I am just begining to read more about the EFI thing, and begining to understand some of the concepts that all the systems have in common. .

Even though I had the MEGA Squirt set up, once I realized I wanted more features, I kind of quit fooling with it, and my education came to a halt for awhile. I have purchased a couple of basic books, have joined EFI101.com, and am reading more trying to get an overview as well as the really basic technical concepts in my head. . Unfortunately, Accel is not represented on EFI101.com much, but the basic ideas are all over the place. . Anyway, thanks for the advice, and I will let you know how things progress. I have admired your writing for years, going way back to the Slant Six News.

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I can't believe the Gen 7 documentation is so bad. I heard bad things about the Holley Commander 950 documentation too. I was told the Holley EFI tech support people were not very good either. If I go EFI I'm leaning toward the Haltech E6X for a lower budget system. SDS was a consideration, but it's not as flexible. The Haltech is supposed to be able to use a multi tooth trigger which makes me wonder if a late model factory crank position sensor could be stuck in the bellhousing just like the Magnum V6s and V8s. What's wrong with a 122 tooth trigger wheel especially since it's already there?

At one point I made up a chart of ECUs and their features. I still have it, but it needs updating as it's 5 years old, products have all been updated and wideband O2 has become much more widespread since then.

Dave Muller here in Washington had a Buick V6 crank trigger wheel adapted to his race slant. You can also put magnets in your damper and use a Hall Effect switch like SDS does.

Thanks for the compliment! I try to help. Sometimes I help a little too much, but that's improving as I get older.

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Joshua

On the Megasquirt, you could rig up a crank trigger wheel by simply putting a wheel with three bolts on the damper and using a VR sensor like the one in the distributor to read it. Or you could attach a trigger wheel from a Ford EDIS and use a VR sensor if you wanted to use different programming and did not need sequential injection. I haven't tried either one myself, but these are the usual methods on the Megasquirt message board.

I'm not sure what the Accel system requires for a crank trigger, though. The exact requirements are often a matter of software.

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"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

I also believe that you can use a 7 pin HEI unit to convert the sine wave to a square wave. The MegaSquirt I v2.2 documentation explains how this works for their setup.

Is there a reason not to use the MSD6 ignition with the tach drive output going into the Hall effect wire on the DFI? Does the Gen7 have its own ignition system?

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

The Gen 7 controls the timing so the MSD box gets triggered by the Gen 7 instead of the other way around. Also, the Gen 7 will work with the stock VR distributor, it just needs to be wired right.

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Joshua

This doesnt sound right, although I know nothing about the Gen7. But the MSD is the most popular setup in the world and I think they would/should know exactly how to hook it right up to there box. It sounds to me like you just need the correct Tack adapter to send into the gen7 & you could use it just the way it is( but you couldnt go sequench).

As far as crank triggers there is some for the Jeep 4.0 at Hesco that I was wandering if they could be adapted to the slant. Its the whole balancer with the Trigger wheel made in and a ajustable sensor.
MSD also had a universal Cam senser kit that has a mag that you just drill a hole in your timing gear & install and mount the senser in the cover and is ajustable. But you would need the crank sensor also. But then you could have sequench injection.

Just thinking out loud, hope it helps.

Lucky,

With the Gen 7 and most all other full featured engine management systems the computer controls the timing. The distributor is only used for position sensing and to point the spark to the proper cylinder. The signal must go from the distributor to the engine management system. The engine management system will then signal the MSD or other ignition box.

The Gen 7 requires a crank position sensor with 3 events per crank revolution. Most OEM stuff in cluding the Jeep is multi-tooth and won't work. Never mind that the Jeep damper doesn't fit a slant.

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Joshua