Hello everyone long time lurker first time poster, great slant six site here. I hope someone might be able to help me out with this question. I read the thread on the HEI electronic ignition retro fit and understand how to do it but my truck is a 1982 D150 with the electronic spark control system and I think the ballast resistor is in the housing with the computer or it does not use one. Can I still do this conversion and if so what do I need to do. Thanks in advance. Mopar4life

I did the HEI conversion on my 86. The first thing you need is the service manual, for the wiring diagrams. That will tell you if there are any ballast resistors, mine had none outside of the computer I don't know if there was one built into the computer or not. I believe on your 82 the computer is mounted on the air cleaner, mine was mounted behind the battery hanging from the fender. All the wires to hookup the HEI were going right to the computer.

So I pulled guts out of the computer and mounted a 1/4" by 8 3/4" by 4" piece of aluminum for a heatsink inside the computer housing.

I used a 6 pin GM weatherpack that I got from junk yard for $2 to make all the connections. Do not attempt to buy this weatherpack new from NAPA just the blank housings are $15 apiece!!!! By the time the guy had figured all the pins and seal I would have had $45 in just one six pin connector. I found mine on a K5 blazer for $2. I was able to reuse most of the seals and bought new pins as needed. I think I ended up with $10 or less invested in the connector.

Good luck and with careful planning you might be able to use the stock wiring and housing as I did and no one will ever know you did the conversion.

Hope this helps Dave

P.S. Also make sure you use the the blaster 2 coil as noted in the article.

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86 Miser 170,000+
2 1/4" exhaust
Holley 1920 #55
HEI MSD BLaster 2
17.8 mpg

Thanks for the info man!

The balast resistor is the least of your worries - most cars with ESC simply don't have one. Instead, the computer takes care of the dwell needs.

There's two ways you can handle this. The biggest issue with this is that the distributor with ESC will have no spark advance mechanism of any sort. If you wired it up to a 4-pin HEI module, you'd get a fixed timing setup. Might be just the ticket for a drag car, or for making it run in a pinch - but it's not appropriate for a street car where you have to worry about easy starting, gas mileage, and optimum drivability.

The cheapest cure is to drop in an earlier distributor with vacuum and mechanical advance.

The other option - and I have this on my own Dart - is to hook up the ESC distributor to a 7 or 8 pin HEI module, and get a computer that will control the HEI module's timing. This could be a Megasquirt (which can be built as a stand-alone timing control) or certain MSD devices.

There's one possibility I've dreamt up that would have the computer output altered with a few resistors so it would drive an HEI module, but this is really just an exercise in weirdness rather than a practical idea. Usually the problem with the ESC computer isn't that the spark is not hot enough (it wouldn't surprise me if it's equivalent to a HEI) but that the computer (or the complex array of vacuum hoses that it relies on) is having problems.

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

Isn't. It's roughly equivalent to external/independent Chrysler electronic ignition. Not bad, not great.

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

Thanks for clearing that up, Dan. I had been wondering since the ESC has no balast resistor if it might not be like the HEI in other respects.

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

Awsome guys, I do thank you all for the info.