Starting problems

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Sat Apr 25, 09 6:03 pm

Pete , don't want to hijack you're thread in wanted............

Have you tried manually retarding the distributor?

Disable the start retard & fire the motor , put a timing light on it & retard the timing to 14* , shut motor off & see if it fires , if not then i would suspect the starter saver/start retard is ok.

As already been suggested, forget all the gismos & fit a switch across the small red wire to MSD.

Pete · Post by **Pete** » Wed Apr 29, 09 12:52 pm

Seem to have got to the bottom of this.

The basic cause is the accuracy of distributor Rotor phasing.

Even though I was running an after-market distributor, due to a number of factors, the quality of the product was not sufficient to avoid cross-fire when cranking.

So, the top tip of the day is: do not bother buying an MSD Digital 6 unless you are prepared to, or have the capability of, phasing the rotor; as 20 degrees is too much timing to pull out on cranking and cross-fire will result.
Save your money and run a 6AL variant, and use another device such as a manual retard box.

My fix was to chop up an MSD billet Distributor and weld it at the correct rotor phasing setting........MSD advise running a crank trigger with a Digital 6; and this is what I am doing with the Hemi

Dave-R · Post by **Dave-R** » Wed Apr 29, 09 1:04 pm

I checked my own MSD billet dizzy after Adams previous comments about phasing. Couldn't fault it. Maybe I was lucky in this case.
I don't want to put so much timing into mine that i need to use the 20 degree retard either. But my car is just a mild street car after all.

Pete · Post by **Pete** » Wed Apr 29, 09 1:05 pm

It was close, but I wanted to run locked out timing and the easiest way to achieve that was to add 140 amps worth

Anonymous · Post by **Anonymous** » Sat May 02, 09 1:39 am

Manualy retarding/advancing the distributor does'nt pose a problem due to the rotor/tower fireing in harmony with each other , pull timing electronicaly the rotor to tower phasing will split , misfire will occur depending how much timing is pulled coupled with cylinder pressures.

Been there done it , not a pretty site.

Dave-R · Post by **Dave-R** » Sat May 02, 09 9:22 am

Understood. Staying away from the electronic retard.