It was a blast, but exhausting beyond belief. I will share more later. On another thread I will detail how he installed the distributor to get everything timed right, and compatible with MSDII ignition control. It is dead simple if done right. It cannot miss.

I have so much to share: observations about MSII, Tuner Studio, ignition control, Peter Florance, ignitions in general, the process of changing anything that works already for the unknown.

Am too tired now to write more. I will go collapse.

Sam

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Here are some observations.

1. MSII is far superior to MSI. However, it has so many more options, you have to be smarter to get it set up correctly for your application. It will move your "stupid border" considerably.

2. I could not have done this without Peter.He is a genius.He has amazing energy and drive. He is humorous. He is an electronics geek supreme. He also is a car nut. He auto crosses a mid 80's 5 series beemer with a 3 liter slant. Because he is a hobbyist as well he brings a passion for this kind of work that is unusual.

3. It was nerve wracking to drive a car with newly installed, un-tuned MSII, misfiring under certain conditions, home through mid-Atlantic holiday traffic, around the DC beltway which is nearly all under construction on the VA side. It was maybe the most stressful thing I have done. Patience was the order of the day. I figured the only thing worse than being surrounded by idiot drivers was to become one myself. I was so tired when I got home, I took a 90 minute nap even though I had just had a cup of coffee.

4. My brother followed me down and back. This was a lifesaver. We stayed in touch via cell phone. I owe him big time. He says he enjoyed the adventure, and I believe him.

5. Check ALL connections twice before driving away. One of the communications cables had not been fastened down well, and of course, fell off 5 minutes away from Peter's place at 9 PM, in the dark, on a strange road. Peter came to the rescue, and we found the separated cable while looking for a loose vacuum line to the map sensor. This experience made me decide to come home via routes that avoided the harbor tunnels that take you from VA Beach over the New Port News area. Having that kind of failure while in one of those tunnels could have killed someone.

6. Everything always takes longer than you think it will. We started work at around 11 in the morning, and called it a day at 8:30 in the evening. At the end we were working with flashlights.

7. When you find yourself saying, "This does not make sense", then your perspective is not broad enough. The loose cable had us looking in all the wrong places for misfires that were happening. WE regapped the plugs, played with fuel, and played with the filtering part of the program. While everything did make it better, it did not find the real problem.

8. Plan on taking breaks for such a project. We took none. We were exhausted and dehydrated at the end of the day,and would likely have checked the loose cable had we been better rested, and better fed.

9. Installing MSII is kind of like starting over. Years of tuning are gone, and in some ways the car runs worse. But, it is only some good tuning time away from being much, much better.

10. It starts much more reliably under all temperature conditions. This is huge plus.

11. Tuner Studio is the tuning program to use. It is way, way more powerful than Mega tune. But, it will require much more time to know what it can do. You must pay to get its best features, which I was happy to do.

12. Even with the fuel map too rich on MS II, I got 23 MPG on the way home with MSII and 21 MPG going down with MSI. I attribute the improvement to timing control on MSII. And it is not tuned yet. It all seems promising.

13. There are areas of the map where there are near fatal, computer scrambling misses happening. Mainly they are at the high vacuum, engine braking, and high end, boost parts of the map. I could fix this with fuel, but Peter suspects other things need to be dealt with, perhaps noise in the ignition. We are trying to sort that out now. I don't doubt that we will.

I am glad I did this. I feel like I have a much better base into which to put time. Thanks Peter, and thanks Dave.

Sam

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Congrats, Sam!

Sounds like a new dawn. I hope to join you before long.

I LOVE this statement:
Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

If I can help, I will. But I am still pretty much a dummy here. My "Stupid Border" is a little moved, but not much.
Sam

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Nice story Sam. We all need to go on a quest once in a while.

Way to take on the dragon.

Way to go finding a wizard.

The trick with " one daying the wizard " is taking it all in. I eventually overload and reset without warning.

.....thanks for the cool thinking tool!

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Yeah....Im the one who destroyed this rare, vintage automobile.....

Thanks Sandy, I like the metaphor. I will have to tell Peter he is the Wizard. Maybe I will just call him that now.

Sam

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