First msd box I bought for my camaro was used but worked fine on my friends car for many years, get it installed and go around the block and it dies. So I bought a new one and installed it, fastward about a year and Im driving to my inlaws house on the freeway when it starts to rain, I get about 3 miles from their house and it dies. Good thing my wife was following me or it would have been a long walk in the rain. Today install a new 6a box that I ordered from summit, I get two blocks from my inlaws house (had it towed there instead of the 8 miles back to my house) and what happens? The mother f-er dies agian. This time I just hung a tire off the back bumper and had my father inlaw push me back to his house with his el camino.

I have the box mounted in a dry place (on the inner fender behind the core support) w/ a good ground and power straight from the battery. I guess Im going to have to swap the good old reliable points dist back in so I can get the car back home.

Anyone else had this type of problem? Im thinking about mounting the dam box inside the car somehow, there really ins't anyother place that stays 100% dry.

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70 Camaro Sport Coupe
*350cid balanced and blue printed short block, edelbrock rpm heads, intake, cam and carb. Flowtech coated headers, 2 1/2" flowmaster AT exhaust system
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Joe, I had the exact same problem with the Digital 6 Plus. Two of them went bad on me; luckily both in my driveway. Both times, MSD was real good about it and replace the boxes free of charge. I didn't take a third chance, though and sold the 3rd box brand spanking new. I know that some people have great success with these MSD boxes and swear by them but, like you, I had nothing but trouble.

One of the things that MSD asked me about was whether or not my car tended to sit for long periods of time. I told them that it frequently sat for up to 3 weeks at a time. They said that the battery would tend to discharge during that time and that when I restarted the engine, there would be a lot of alternator output that might have been affecting the Digital 6. Who knows http://www.nastyz28.com/ubb/confused.gif? In addition, I run one of those crummy "one wire" alternators that I started to suspect might have exasperated the problem.

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80 Z28, 406, Sportsman heads, Speed Pro forged pistons, 350 rods, Comp Cams 292 hyd, Weiand Team G, Holley 750 double pump, Richmond Gear Overdrive 6-speed, Auburn Gear limited slip, Torque Tech 3" exhaust, Flowmaster 3".
PST polygraphite bushings, Edelbrock IAS shocks, Moog coils

2002 WS-6 Trans Am, skip shift

1991 5.0 Mustang, FMS clutch and aluminum radiator, Hedman X-pipe, Dynomax Ultra Flo Welded mufflers, Flowmaster tailpipes, UPR clutch quadrant and firewall adjuster

Have you tested the box? un plug the two pin connector, insert jumper wire between the two pin females with ignition on, and listen for click/spark every time the jumper is removed.

<font face="Arial,Verdana" size="2">
I have the box mounted in a dry place (on the inner fender behind the core support) w/ a good ground and power straight from the battery.
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I'm trying to picture exactly where this is mounted. I've always understood that MSDs were very suceptable to heat, especially the analog boxes.
If I am picturing this right, it sounds like you have it near the battery on the fenderwell? Does the airflow from the fan/radiator blow in that area? Like is it in a straight plane with the face of the fan shroud?
Just throwing out questions here.

<font face="Arial,Verdana" size="2">Originally posted by HEAVYchev:
I'm trying to picture exactly where this is mounted. I've always understood that MSDs were very suceptable to heat, especially the analog boxes.
If I am picturing this right, it sounds like you have it near the battery on the fenderwell? Does the airflow from the fan/radiator blow in that area? Like is it in a straight plane with the face of the fan shroud?
Just throwing out questions here.

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Its on the driveside fenderwell, under the horn relay tucked in by the side marker light.

As for testing the box, Ive done the shorting the two pins and no spark happens out of the coil wire. Ive also grounded the white wire to simulate a points ing. and still no spark. I have power at both wires (one full time battery and the other ign switched) and it has a good ground.

I even charged the battery for two days with a 2 amp charger before I started it today because the battery was semi dead from the hazard lights. So that rules out the excessive charge from the alternator.

i thought that msd had a lifetime warranty on there boxes

Joekool, I had a 6AL box start dying on me after 1 year of no problems. Both happened on deceleration/stopping. I found an ad on racingjunk.com for a place in North Carolina called WestTech that did MSD ignition box repair.(Couldn't find the ad a few minutes ago when I looked though). I sent Pat the box. He checked it out,found the problem, & fixed it & shipped it back for about $70-75. Pat told me the MSD boxes were assembled in Mexico & that the circuit boards just "float" inside the box with some foam. The circuit board in not scewed down to anything. So if the circuit board touches the metal case it's shutoff city. I've had my box repaired for 2 years now with ZERO problems. I run it hard in all kinds of weather. It has neen 100% reliable since being repaired. The box is mounted horizontally on the passenger inner fenderwell of my daily driver '79 el camino. I have also heard good things about MSD Factory Repair as far as the work they do with great pricing too. Good Luck.

Second sentence should read, "Both times ... (Shut off on me twice in the same week).

bad ground or solid core plug wires?

<font face="Arial,Verdana" size="2">Originally posted by hhott71:
bad ground or solid core plug wires?</font>

Yeah, ALL electronics / ignition boxes are sensitive to spikes and poor grounds. ShoGun, MSD, Mallory, Dedembear, all the aftermarket builders of electronics and ignitions would 'like to see' a heavy ground cable ran from the battery to the engine block, and another heavy cable ran from the engine block to a common lug that branches off to ALL electronic components. DON'T trust the unibody as making a good grounds. What was it someone said... that would work fine as long as the car was made out of copper!

When MSD says to run the (-) wire to the battery they MEAN it. People seem to have a lot of trouble with this concept, and 80% of the time they are having problems with the box that is the problem

If they want the ground run to the bat - post why dont they make the ground wire longer than 5 inches, the bat + wire is about 3 ft long so there is no problem running that one to the bat + terminal.

Ive got 00 battery cables that are solidered to the cable ends and two chassis grounds to the bat, one goes to the core support, the other goes to the subframe.

Ditto on the grounds. Not to sound like a ricer, but redundant grounds are a good thing. A couple of pounds of copper is cheap insurance!

The reason they want a good ground is that everyone always focuses on the + cable when they should be focusing on the ground cable. Electricity flows from negative to positive. Not too many people understand this.

A teacher I had a few years ago said that the batt + terminal is actually negative, but people are used to calling it positive, so it caught on that way and never changed.

Marv is correct " ALL electronics / ignition boxes are sensitive to spikes and poor grounds". In theory of electronics there is the arguement that electrons flow neg to pos or pos to neg, but either way, you must have a solid ground to complete the circuit. Every time you make a splice or connection you potentially lose some of that ground. In other words, a good solid ground will have a low ohms reading as the resistance to the flow of electrons to ground is less. A high ohms reading means more resistance to electron flow to ground. You want as low an ohms reading as is possible. This means that any stray voltages will go to ground (path of least resistance) rather than going to the box. Stray voltages will effect electronics big time.

My 6AL box fried a couple of years ago, and it turned out to be a bad ground which caused the board to fry. Now that its properly wired with the ground run to the battery, everything is working great. Where you splice into the ground wire on the box, I would also heat shrink the splice to keep moisture out. Moisture can cause corrosion which also can lead to a bad connection or ground.

[This message has been edited by Ztoy (edited January 02, 2005).]

I omh tested the blaster II coil, as far as I can tell it must be starting to shortout, it only has .6 ohms of resistance, every other remote coil I have in my garage have anywhere from 1.7 to 2.2 ohms on the primary windings.

Thanks to ignition man, he emailed me about the blaster II coils having a primary coil winding failure rate way above other performance coils and to look into that as a likely cause of my ign box failures.

Just a guess...but maybe stop going to inlaws http://www.nastyz28.com/ubb/wink.gif

Ignition Man saves the day again. Miss that guy.