American Muscle Power

rotorhead

A tech question for muscle car owners. Does anyone use an MSD ignition system on their cars (points type) such 6AL multispark type. Are the easy fit,do the give problems etc. Any info appreciated.

911s

Have recently fitted MSD 6AL to Porsche 911 (only 6 cyl compared to most yankee 8cyl!).
Replaced points at same time with pertronix ignitor, MSD coil and new plug leads/caps etc. Very simple to fit and car seems to run much better. MSD unit replaces similar
Bosch CD UNIT which had given up after 35 years. The most important thing is to make
sure the unit is set correctly for number of cylinders.

rotorhead

Hello 911s
I was not expecting a reply from 911 man but you hit the nail on the head so to speak. I am thinking of MSD as an upgrade if my HKZ unit fails, that or a permatune unit. I don't think it's possible to use the pertronix ignitor in my case
for the Ro80 . I will look into it further.
Which version of hkz unit have you got 3,6,8 pin. The are available on ebay Germany but are expensive

911s

Did a lot of reading up before fitting unit and general opinion (porsche owners) is that
Permatune unit can have sudden failures and that MSD is more reliable. Purchased from
Pelican Parts - online shop specialising in German car parts in USA, but dollar rate was in
my favour at the time. Unit came with very detailled instructions & wiring which allowed me to remove original Porsche wiring which I will keep just in case I get CD unit rebuilt
and want to return car to original condition. Same old story with classic cars, do I keep
100% original or do I replace certain parts with new reliable components which result in
a more 'usable' classic.

shagman

I have a MSD 6AL unit that I'll be putting onto my 79 chevy van that I’ve recently fitted with a 74 camaro engine. It has a HEI distributor on it but I don’t have instructions. It’s meant to be fairly easy fit. I’ll just do a search for fitting instructions when | get round to fitting, I’m sure they’ll be on the MSD site somewhere. I got mine second hand with no instruction. The 6AL is a multispark unit not just a more powerful spark are the others ones mentioned Bosch etc the same?
If I get round to fitting it soon I’ll let you know how I got on.

911s

Make sure coil is suitable for MSD unit, can cause problems. All relevant info on MSD site.
If you have problems I have wiring diagrams which were included in kit.

hi5

I just fitted a Petronix Ignitor 11 and a blaster coil to my Mustang just last week,took about 1 hour,simple to fit.instructions are very clear.
If your car is fitted with a resistor from the ignition to the coil you will need to bypass it,mine was a pink wire at the ignition.
you will need a strobe light to reset the timing,mine was out by about 15 degrees after the swap.
Drove it to Kilbegan Sunday and its driving better than ever

Shagman,I can scan the instructions and put them up here if you want?

rotorhead

The Bosch HKZ ( Hochspannungs-Kondensator-Zündung = high-voltage capacitor ignition) part no 0227200002 had a 3 pin connector and was fitted to NSU Ro80 Porsche 911 , Alfa Romeo Montreal, Maserati Gibli.

NSU and Porsche changed to 8 pin connecters around 1974 Part no's 0227200006, and 0227200007. I'm not certain if the 006 version was used by Porsche .These units contained more electeonics for additional functions for the Ro80 including Over revs cut out with warning buzzer, exhaust emission control, timing advance and electronic Rev counter. A special coil (9 volt Transformer) is used on the Ro80 probably also on the Porsche. As the unit is Capacitor discharge there is no capacitor fitted at distributor .The unit sends 450 volts to the transformer which converts it 45000 volts. The units are generally very reliable but as the are old they can suffer from ageing especially the inbuilt capacitor. The units can also be damaged by test firing the ignition without properly earthed sparkplugs, this causes the tranformer ouput of 45000 volts to reverse direction into the HKZ unit blowing the thyristor ccts.

So to change to the MSD 6AL ,a compatible coil change + capacitor ? would be required ,+ rev counter adapter maybe. The other options of rev limiter, emission control buzzer could be dispensed with. I like the idea of multispark as the Ro80 sparkplugs tend to foul up due to oil /carbon build up at low speed driving. Attached photo shows HKZ unit mounted on left behind the large air filter ,this is the later version unit. If you look at the distributor you will see three wires ,1 in the centre from the coil and 2 to the plugs ,The position of plug wires and the double ended rotor arm present a problem converting the distributor to pointless type.

shagman

hi5 wrote: »

Shagman,I can scan the instructions and put them up here if you want?

Yeah Hi5 that'd be great, Cheers .