i'm a new guy. I've only posted a few times and i'm learning about what is good for my 225.


i'm curious what i should buy. or if you guys have one for sale.

i'm wanting a msd (or other brand) ignition. coil, and a electronic distributor.

if anything some advice would be GREAT.

trying to figure out what i'm looking for.

and if anyone has a good super six carb. lemme know. other wise i'll be needing a good holley single. i believe mine is a 1920.

thank you.

You can convert to electronic ignition a couple of different ways:

1- A Pertronix conversion. This is the simplest way, and it looks like you are running points, as the entire electronics fits neatly inside your distributor. Go to their link http://pertronix.com/ and look at the Ignitor and Ignitor II products.

2- A GM HEI conversion is relatively simple, and it works well. Wiring is minimal. There is a writeup on this in the articles section of this website, I believe.

3- Install all the pieces that Mopar used on a later model car, say '73-75. These can be purchased new or from a wrecking yard.

4- Numerous MSD, Accel, etc, solutions exist as well. Most of these ignition boxes can be driven off a factory electronic distributor. There is a person on eBay that sells new, OEM slant six electronic distributors for about $65.

Numbers 1-4 are ordered (pretty much) in order of complexity of installation, although none of them are particularly difficult.

Hope this helps, and welcome to the board!

-Mac

thanks. for the post.


i will check out the hei article. and ebay.

i'm not particularly sure what ignition to buy. there are so many different choices.

first i just want no points. and of course i want a hotter spark.


i'm pretty sure my car has about 200k on it. it runs ok. power is lacking, but its also consuming lots of gas. idle is horrible.

thanks for your time.

See HEI upgrade. Gets you spark quality equal to MSD with better reliability and lower cost.

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Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

I'm currently running a HEI in my Dart, and it's certainly OK for a normal engine. It'll certainly be fine with a mild buildup - Super Six, better exhaust, head milling and a mild cam, that sort of thing. If you're planning something very extreme like a turbo motor or a very high compression racer, I'm not so sure how it will compare to an MSD box. I plan to conduct a huge ignition shootout sometime in the next couple months, once I get the Dart on the road, to see if an HEI ignition compares well to an MSD box on a turbo motor, as well as pitting it against a couple of other factory and maybe aftermarket ignitions.

What to use depends on what you need. Is this going to be a basic daily driver or a wild performance motor?

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"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

it will only be a daily driver.

aside from the ignition i need carb work too. i'd like to get the most mpg that i can get. so eventually maybe dutra duels. i have 2 exhaust manifolds. and a super six intake.


i need a good super six carb.


also thought about the efi conversion. plenty of older gm cars to get the parts, in my neck of the woods (sacramento,ca) there arent many slant 6 225's in wrecking yards. and the ones i've found are all taken apart.

it would be sooooo much easier to swap to a 318 but i like my slant.

Whatever you do, stay away from the MSD "look alike" boxes that are on E-Bay. They are nothing more than cheap Chinese junk and will die a quick death.

I have a Mopar Performance MSD6-AL and have "0" problems with it in almost 10 years.

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Official Cookie and Mater Tormentor.

I think the "one step at a time" combined with "keep it simple" approach is best.

Retrofitting a slant six with an EFI setup is most certainly doable, and has been done by some of the members of this board. But there is no "exact fit" EFI for the slant, so there is a substantial amount of customizing/programming/tuning involved to make it work.

In contrast, mother Mopar made millions of Super Slant Sixes. Purchasing one of these setups (junkyard or eBay) and installing it would guarantee you a good running machine, everything else being equal (carb ok, manifold not cracked, rest of engine working well). The super six often delivers better fuel mileage than the one barrel setup you are using now.

So go ahead and upgrade your ignition, get it running well, then do the Super Six upgrade and ENJOY your slant while you plot your next upgrade. Modded slants are very cool, but "Mission Creep" is responsible for a lot of unfinished, non-running cars sitting in backyards everywhere!

Just my 2 cents.

- Mac

i could never let my car sit. i want to take it out everyday. bad paint and all. i dont care.

i definatly will go electric on ignition first. i think finding a good super 6 carb my take a while.

well hell I was not going to jump in here but my main engineer Matt Cramer made a post. I have always used MOPAR electronic igintions on all my engines on my race engines. Not a issue a bobbel zilch zero.. My stock engine which is out of my car and is going to be my turbo build engine has a MOPAR electronic converson with a high curve distributor on it, I think it would run nice on any street car . I run on my race engine now a MOPAR electronic iginitation with a lean burn distributor so I can lock the timing. With a MOPAR Crome box. Hell it had a orange box on it and caused no problems but I was turning about 6300 rpm in the 1/4 and the box said it was good to 6000 rpms I put the chrome box on it . No diference. I have a new MSD 6 AL, transbrake vavle body, Dedenbearer delay box two step box adjustable rpm controll ect and have never put them for two reasons. One reason is if it aint broke doint break it or fix it.Thanks Ron Parker



Bagels On Juice Im On Boost

I'ed go normal mopar ECU or GM HEI if this is going to be a car you drive all over. Its ALOT cheaper to carry a spare ECU/HEI in the trunk then to carry a spare MSD box.

Anything can fail.

In my coronet I have a MSD setup BUT I have the MSD wiring run along side the old points system. If the MSD box craps out I have the old points dist in the trunk i can just pop in. Then just switch the wires on the coil and be back on my way. This has already saved me once.

Well, the 6,000 RPM rating Mopar gives the orange box is for V8s - slant sixes don't have as many sparks, and I suspect an orange box will be good to 8,000 RPM with two fewer sparks to fire.

One of my reasons for using HEI is so that I could put the ignition under computer control. It was the easiest way to get a boost retard in my situation, and the Mopar ECU (a term that really causes confusion in the EFI world) wasn't really meant to get a timing signal from a computer. While Ford and GM built external ignition modules to work with their EFI systems for a while before bringing the ignition module into the computer, Mopar skipped that and went straight for integrating the ignition module into the computer before they'd even gone EFI.

Of course, these notes on the ignition really don't matter unless you are going with EFI, which is pretty time consuming and expensive. For a street car, a basic orange box, Ignitor, or HEI four pin module will provide you with years of trouble free operation.

_________________
"Mad Scientist" Matt Cramer
'66 Dart - turbocharged 225
My blog - Mad Scientist Matt's Lair

thanks again guys. i've looked on ebay and found the electronic distributors.

so after i get the distributor i'll be buying the rest.

that will give me time to find whats in my area. and it sounds like the hei is going to be cheaper and more readily available.


appreciate all the info.

My main seintist has spoken Dr Matt Cramerslanter. Matt we have got to work out that megasquirt or something for a turbo . Your my man can we do this. Thanks Ron Parker










Possum And The Mad Scientist Are Going Kick Asz And Take Names

I would certainly be interested in some dyno runs with MSD vs. HEI. The MSD box is certainly well engineered and a very good performer indeed, though I am not convinced it is necessarily a better performer than HEI. The HEI system is way, way overengineered for the job it does most often (light the fire in non-extreme engines) and even with stock-type components, it will support very high RPM and very high cylinder pressure. There are also many high-performance upgrade components for it that even further extend its capabilities.

The US automakers screwed up almost everything they touched when serious emission regulations were phased in starting in the early 1970s. They futzed around with ridiculous Rube Goldbergery and persnickety Frankencarburetors, couldn't make a catalytic converter without creating ridiculous levels of exhaust restriction, and just generally behaved as though emission control were a silly passing fad not worth putting much serious thought, effort, or money into.

But they did devise seriously good electronic ignition systems, some of which can convincingly be described as the best of their type in the world. Why? Well, because it was less costly to design really strong ignition systems than it was to rework half-baked fuel systems and stone-age combustion chambers and add-on widgets, and the improved
combustion resulting from really good ignition systems compensated for a
multitude of sins in those other places.

GM were the first company to put catalytic converters on their cars. They weren't very good converters, and were easily damaged by the raw fuel that would be sent to them by even minor engine misfiring. So, GM evaluated the electronic ignitions they'd been playing with for a couple of years, as well as the system Chrysler had introduced in late '71 and made standard equipment in '73, and then designed an extremely high-performance ignition system (HEI) that bettered the performance of the previous GM and non-GM systems. There's a very detailed engineering paper on HEI that makes interesting reading; it is number 750346. Closer to home (and free of charge) is this post here, which gives a detailed comparison of Mopar electronic ignition vs. HEI operation and performance potential.

Yes, GM means Generally Mediocre, but they did some very, very good engineering, and it's foolish to turn up one's nose at it when it offers an easy, highly effective and inexpensive upgrade to our cars. Let us also not forget, Chrysler put a great deal of really crappy engineering on the roads, too. If you can't bring yourself to install "inferior GM parts" on your car, that's fine, go get an HEI module made by Echlin or Standard-Bluestreak...problem solved!

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.