Aspire coil in dist conversion to Festy dist with external

[ericsmith32]

$300.. :shock: To bad you couldn't have got one from a junker, they don't have any at the picknpull right now though.

[aithanmier]

well i tried that route before. i swapped my spare from my parts car on there. went out 10 miles down the road. ordered in a coil from Advance auto, 140 bucks, they got it 2 days later so i went to pick it up, open the box to see an EXTERNAL coil staring up at me. i calmly tried to explain to the guy that the aspire had an internal coil and he wanted to argue with me. turns out the only way to get a replacement coil is to buy a rebuilt disty. i bought it from rock auto, came to 295 with shipping and the core. but it also came with the module. the other brands were more expensive and didn't have the module included. if i had been thinking i would have just hooked up my msd blaster 2 coil and run with it rather than spending half a weeks wages on another disty with a flawed design.

[aithanmier]

wel the rock auto disty went out. so i'm gonna get a junkyard disty and run an external coil. my idea about removing the coil tower and running a festica cap was no good, the mounting bolts don't line up quite right. the festiva is spaced farther apart. gonna get the coil tower add on from msd if i can find one. advance auto couldn't order em for some reason.

[ericsmith32]

Go to O'Reillys if you want anything custom. I've found AA or Autozone don't keep alot of custom parts and if they do they don't know jack. The o'reilly's here in kck they're pretty knowledgable when it comes to custom stuff, I think it's a team of ex-racers. It's about the only thing they're good for though.

[aithanmier]

found em on sumittracing.com ordered 2 of em just in case. now i'll be going to u-wrench it on monday after court to pick up a used disty. then i gotta haul butt down to ft scott for school tuesday. i had to take my one sick day for the month for this darn child support hearing. sux!

[darkdan]

Well, idealsociety and I are stumped too.

So get it figured out.

MSD tech forum board isn't very helpful.

Any clue what wires are what on the dist plugs? I can't find it in my manuals and my electrical and vacuum manual won't be here till later this week.

Here's what MSD said:

"I don't think you'll be able to install an external coil on that particular model. The 6AL can still be used though. You'll need to access coil positive and negative though. These wires will now run to the red and white wire on the MSD. The orange and black wires will replace the original coil wires on the coil."

So let's prove them wrong!

[FB71]

if you can wire the MSD box to it, then you can wire an external coil. As long as a festy cap will fit..... (coil wire terminal on the outside)

[darkdan]

Festy cap will not fit.

That was the original plan.

[FB71]

well then, sounds like you're screwed.

unless.....

will the Aspire module fit in a Festy dizzy body?

[darkdan]

Will that carry over the camshaft sensor and such?

I think that may make a wiring issue though.

[FB71]

that's why I said put the aspire mod in the festy dizzy. That would carry over the reluctor and cam sensor, but give you an external coil. If anyone near me (or wants to ship to me) one of each (Aspire and FI Festy dizzys), I'll make a hybrid dizzy (Aspire module in a Festy dizzy) and ship it back to you. Sounds like a fun challenge!

[darkdan]

Anyone know which wires are for the coil? I could at least hook up the MSD while someone figures this out.

[ericsmith32]

The three wire connection to the disty is for the coil. The yellow/black for the tach that's for sure. I think the blue is the + and you may have to make a negative because the white one for the dlc. According to the wiring diagrams those same exact wire colors serve that purpose to the ignition control module and seeing that blue is the heaviest wire and we know the yellow/black's for the tach.. deductive reasoning in my mind says i'm correct. But my question is how does the coil get the fire signal... thru the "+"? If I had the money i'd go get a extra disty and msd coil and try I'd hate for my reasoning to blow somebody elses coil. BTW A protege guy figured out how to hook up a msd coil on his so it's possible I may try to track him down if I get a chance. I don't think he documented it so other 2nd gens might like to know how to do this as well.

[ericsmith32]

I looked at another protege posting and one the members who installed a crane hi-6 system used the blue for the positive. That raises another question is these pos coil's internally grounded, maybe that's the whole problem with this type of setup.

Why does positive character some times get blipped out??

[aithanmier]

the festiva cap won't fit, but ytou can still modify a cap with the add on power tower from msd. i ordered 2 of em on saturday so they should be at the house today. i'm gonna give it a whirl this weekend. so what exactly does the msd ignition box do? does it take over the ignition module's job or what? i've never been very clear on that. if thats what it is then there is an easy fox for these pos disty's run a msd box and mod the cap for an external coil. then your only using the disty for the cam position sensor and the cap and rotor. probably cheaper than replacing the stock disty too.