electronic distributor installed and running!

[Dartgame]

Besides my valve lash adjustment adventure, I installed the electronic distributor earlier last week. 

 

I used the well documented slant six/flat head collection of pieces, a GM 4 pin HEI chip and an ecore coil. 

 

Encountered a few mistakes/issues - 

 

#1 I neglected to jump the ballast resistor feeding the coil, thus I had no ignition start voltage. easy fix.

 

#2 Had the plug wires off one position on the distributor cap, easy fix.

 

#3 Car ran with distributor polarity connected either way to the HEI chip...but would stop running after about 2 minutes 

 

#4 The junkyard gm coil I used proved to be the culprit. Installed a new ford ecore coil, and voila runs fine, but now the the distributor polarity is absolutely sensitive. Will not run reversed. For those interested, the male plug on the distributor is the + lead.

 

After getting it running, I fine tuned the timing, adjusted the carb and found I needed to reduce the idle speed about 100 rpm indicating to me more efficient combustion at low speeds. Later I opened the plug gaps to .040" which made no notice-able change in idle quality.

 

For those contemplating the change - go for it. The thing has never started as well as it does now - immediately starts from cold, not that it started badly before. I can let it sit for a few hours and cool off, come by and touch the key and its running. Very good upgrade in my opinion.

[YukonJack]

Thanks for sharing. What is the reason for using the GM chip?

 

[Dartgame]

The GM chip allows you to use an e-core coil, which gives you a much higher output voltage. The mopar ECU requires the use of a oil filled coil which when running can only use 8 volts or so to run. The GM hei allows 12 volts = higher output voltage ! More voltage = higher energy ignition.

[kencombs]

38 minutes ago, Dartgame said:

The GM chip allows you to use an e-core coil, which gives you a much higher output voltage. The mopar ECU requires the use of a oil filled coil which when running can only use 8 volts or so to run. The GM hei allows 12 volts = higher output voltage ! More voltage = higher energy ignition.

And, you can open up the plug gap to take advantage of the potential higher voltage.  The voltage will never be higher than the level needed to jumg that gap.  So a closer gap will result in a shorter spark, lower voltage and heat/energy to light the mixture.