Well I picked my truck up tonight from the shop and drove it all night long.
I missed it so!! It runs great and I think it is fixed! Never guess what was
causing it.............frigin MSD Ignition! The mechanic does local circle
track racing and also owns a 95 Dakota with 200,000 miles on it. He said he
once hooked up a MSD ignition to a 440 engine and it ate the dist caps up in
500-750 miles. He said he looked at my truck's dist cap and it was
practically the same size used on his 440. He said after having a nasty
bucking and stumbling problem(exactly what I was having!) on his 440 he
called MSD and they told him not to use it on his 440 due to the small
internal space within the dist cap. He said the MSD ignition was acually
making many cylinders fire at one due to the high spark voltage and was
causing a rich condition on his plugs(also what I had!). He also told me not
to buy anything other than MSD's ditital ignition boxes, if you can afford
them that is. Otherwise, for diagnosing purposes and overall reliability, he
said he would never recommend one to a vehicle which is a daily driver. He
said he once bought the normal MSD 6 Series and had it die on him 8 times
before he finally threw it away. MSD couldnt even tell him why they kept
buring up. He couldnt even get any spark on the truck for an entire day. He
put a new cap on, which he said was in POOR shape and also put in some
plugs, Autolites of course. I told him the cap/rotor/plugs werent even in
there for 1,000 miles. He said they showed 10,000 miles of wear, and showed
the parts to me. I have changed many many dist caps/rotors on my truck since
having the MSD ignition on it, almost for 2 years now. I have never seem a
cap/rotor eaten up like these parts were. I mean they were toasted. I
completely gutted out the MSD ignition(did a nice clean job too!) and wired
back in the stock coil connector and the truck ran great. He also said after
taking the MSD box out, rewiring the coil connector, and resetting the
battery...........the truck went into closed loop mode, where as before it
was constantly in open loop. He doubled checked all the main startup mode
sensors for possibly ground problems, but everything was fine. Interested
isnt it? He only charged me $75, which wasnt bad for another full diagnostic
computer scan(3 times actually), the parts, and about 5 hours worth of
labor. Well the original MSD Offroad unit failed on me last May and looks
like I wont ever use an MSD Ignition ever again. I still do love their plug
wires though! Anybody wanna buy a MSD 6-Offroad Ignition(tons of unused MSD
wiring also), MSD RFI Noise Filter and the MSD Universal Wiring Harness????
Kyle
93 Dakota 4x4 V6
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