Thought this would make a interesting read : Lindross ( my son Scott) and I do the Columbus Goodguys each year and sell, show and camp ....makes a great weekend ! Even had some time to drink a few with a hamber or two....... Our car of choice has been the Krylon Special roadster but lindross makes a last minute decision to take his 1963 Valiant based on pooring rain and a very bad weather forecast. Once at Goodguys we had the ultimate set up, bus in the campground, trailer in the swap meet and the car entered in the show....works for us...we love it !!! Power parked Valiant .... Great day at the swap meet and even better evening at the Pig Iron bar-b-que! Good food and the coldest High Life i have ever had ... Sat morning the Valiant fails to start after the morning shower trip , but like a good car it failed right next to the hauler...good car !!! Now we have a problem, whats wrong ?????? No tools , nothing as everything we could use or would use is in our swap meet booth. Ok lets check it out . Got spark ???? NOPE NO SPARK ! Now what , well it could be the ballast resistor ( they were once a problem) a quick check with a piece of 14 ga wire laying on the hauler jumpered across the ballast and still no spark ! Ok is the distributor turning ( another slant six issue with a plastic gear ) , yep its turning. Do we have power to the coil YEP tested with the 14 gauge jumper wire, ok we are late so lets walk in the gate and get to selling stuff . Could be worse but here we are with a broke car , a empty car hauler and we know pour way home with both...........no danger element here for sure . AND we have a cell phone and a laptop to have some hamber pick us up and take us to dinner !!! No worrys here for sure .........makes it a lot easier........ So lets go ........
Ok now at the swap meet no modules are to be found so lets buy up a trailer harness ($4) and a bag of connectors ($3) and a box of chevrolet distributors ( i needed some cores for my flathead builds) and the box had a hei gm core in it as well ( $15 for 6 reg and 1 hei). Ok we have the survival tools needed now. Afternoon after the swap meet we mounted the hei module and grounded it through the only hole in the fenderwell and force threaded the hei screw until it was tightened.... Now lets wire the hei coil pos and negative leads to the existing coil leaving the power lead on the coil. We know from spark testing that it does have key on and off power....... Now the McGyver part ( TV show) we need the small terming ends of the hei wired to the pickup coil and i know that the pickup and module need corrrect polaruty to start. But ya know i like the McGyver thinking its a 50/50 world . Works for me , it either WILL or it WONT !!! Wire the chrysler pickup lead from distributor to the small terminal end and twist ( temP0 the leads together and crank er over '''' IT will either : 1- Start and run 2-Or backfire and not run Ok lindross crank er , AND bang it backfires and wont run ( MyGiver would have blown the world up) , so twist them the other way and bang , it runs and runs great !!!!! Maybe even starts better than it ever has !!!!!!! Ok off to the Iron Pig and a cold one....... We will clean this up and show ya the finished cleanup of the system as time permits...
Ha...how cool I keep one of those in my road box on trips...for the HEI..but now i dont have the HEI in that car any longer..
Rock and roll, coochie coo! Love it. Looks like another bag 'o tricks to throw in a bag in the glovebox.
No fair you do this for a living. If I would have tried that you all would be reading how I burnt down my car. You're a freaking genius. Jeff
Interesting observation. The ignition must have been slowly fading out. It had began to start poorly, yet always started and once started motered down the road just fine. It did idle rough though. The car runs remarkable now and like stated, we'll post some pics on the "official" cleanup on the new HEI setup. The trip to Columbus we got a dismal 16 mpg on the fading mopar box. The trip home we saw a much improved 22 mpg with the new HEI hodged in there. Also in addition, the excessive wear on the original starter had taken it's toll too as this sounded like it could die at any moment. Picked up a new mini high torque starter at in the vendors hall and got it installed last night. Talk about night and day. Can you say cranking RPM's boys and girls. Starts better than any other car we own.
I'm a little lost here. Probably due to lack of experience with HEI. The HEI module is a coil? When you do the update, how about a schematic?
They started with mopar transistorized but the failed mopar module could not be located so an HEI module was improvised. I had to read twice to pick that up too. Dunno if that dist is the same as LA small block but some guy on ebay makes an adapter plate to put an HEI module underneath. The bubba guys are plenty crafty and probably already typing a post about how they mounted it to the distributor permanently.
Could this be done with any non-points style setup? What it there are more then two wires from the dizzy, Like the Ford/AMC/Jeep boxes I'm remembering they have 3 or 4 wires. Or is this just useful for you MOPAR fellas? To be specific a mid 70's AMC uses a Motorcraft Ing. box and I've always replaced that system with a points syle dizzy, because I always have electric gremlins bite me in the ***, but if this would work, I could leave the dizzy alone and just replace the box with HEI moduals that are 12 for $0.10. Thanks Jeff Or I could send my distributor to Indy and get it done right
I've been running that set-up for almost 2 years. Used an old computer fan to keep it cool. every thing else is Ford duraspark.
Yeah, new high torque starter and an ignition system that is working properly, I don't know how I can possibly deal with this hard starting now... Sorry for the ****py cell phone video, but you get the idea. <object height="364" width="445"> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kGvc3c0fpmM&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="364" width="445"></object>
thats awesome. i dont know how many of my cars in the past have been,....."well this will get you home" fixes. Its amazing how many of the "this will get you home" fixes stayed that way and outlasted other permanent repairs.
Yea like spraying the inside of a cracked dizzy cap with hairspray ran me 500 miles home. I'da used some Spam but didn't have any!
GMCBubba I am running an open fendered car with an early mopar engine. I like the idea of the use of the GM HEI module. I plan to run one with an aluminum heat sink on the firewall. My question is whether or not the module can be exposed to the elements since I'm running without a hood. Or, does it need to be in some type of aluminum box and not exposed to the elements. Thanks.
Way cool!! Do you think this setup is better than the factory electric Mopar ignition setup? I've got a couple Chry-Piles that could use this little trick!
To answer the two previous questions. Yes i think the HEI is a better system than the older electronic Mopar units. The Mopar was a great unit and worked very well for many year , however the advaced circuitry of the HEI is a step up. On the cover for the module we will add our cover soon to the Valiant and heres the link for them..... http://www.lindertech.com/bhrs/module_cover.htm Glad to help any way we can. Look for the Valiant update soon...
Yeah, just for the record the road side fix is still going strong. I plan on wrapping it up next week into it's final version.
OK, Lindross had a day off today and got er wrapped up. Here is our module cover just for the HEI control module. Old card with old phone number new number is 1-888-809-3835 toll free.... Lindross removed the module on the fender well and put it in a new cover with dielectric grease for a heat sink. Bolted to the fenderwell , there are four wires ( 5 if ya count the ground lead. Two go to the ignition coil and two go to the distributor. We cant believe how easy this thing starts now.!! Another view...... The cover unit is $30 if anyone needs one ( with out module) and the module typically cost less than $28 as well, pm for needs.
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