I have a 81 full size Dodge pickup with a 225. It has the lean burn system installed on the air filter housing.

I need to figure out how to disconnect it without it killing the engine. I have come across a vacuum advance distributor and installed it, along with removed all the smog crap.

Any ideas?

You need the ignition module out of a '70's car or truck. the ignition for yours was built into the lean burn computer; which, you're trying to get rid of...

_________________
My truck is a Frankenstein creation
Built from the dead carcasses of others
And brought BACK TO LIFE!

That's not true. As long as the ignition coil is supplied with power from the battery the engine will run. I'm just curious to know if anyone has done this so it saves me some time trouble shooting the wiring job I'm going to be doing.

All the Lean Burn is doing now, is suppling my coil with power. I have removed all of the sensors and a disconnected half of the lean burn all ready.

All I really need to do now is wire the ignition switch so that it turns the power on and off to the coil. I'm wanting to know if anyone has done this?

I took the whole thing off my '84 D100. I wired in the MP wire harness, a ballast resistor, used the Orangs MP box and a rebuilt vacuum dist. There is a lot of wiring and vacuum lines that can be removed, this really cleans up the engine compartment. I found a switched hot lead coming out of the firewall junction box (it's a shrounded female lead, I think used for testing), the 12volt start wire I routed to the starter relay. This made wiring easy. It took longer to remove parts than to install the new ones.

Cecil

I did run the truck for awhile with the stock dist and most of the wiring removed. IIRC, out of all the wires I removed from the air cleaner, and there's a lot, the only one required to stay was a large gauge grond wire the bolts to the head about 2/3 back next to the valve cover. There were one or two wires I had to connect for run1 and run2 coming off the wire harness that runs to the alt, I just don't recall exactly what I had to do, it's been a while. I just figured it out with a test light.

Cecil

"That's not true. As long as the ignition coil is supplied with power from the battery the engine will run"

Well, there are no points in the distributor of an electronic system, therefore no means of switching the coil on & off. The distributor
signals the ignition module to do that - so, one is needed.

Well, you can use either a magnetic pickup or points to trigger msd style boxes, I think you could make points work with the mopar ei boxes if you really wanted to.

The spark box on the air cleaner has TWO wires to the coil, one being battery (which may or may not be 12VDC depending on start or run) and the other being the intermittent ground that the old points used to supply. The coil works by a collapsing of voltage in the primary (low voltage) side which causes the secondary (high v) side to send a spark -- no interruption, no spark.

The pickup coils in the dist send a signal to the ESC, which then takes into account anything else that is connected to it (engine temp, charge temp, etc) and sends interruptions to the coil. I believe, but am not 100% sure, that there are also advance curves applied, as well as some sort of circuit or component that does the job of the old ballast resistor (applies higher primary voltage during start than during run.

Perhaps there is more to learn before making major changes to a system that is apparently working OK right now...

_________________
FullTime RVer in a 1991 Scamp 13' pulled by a 1982 D150 /6 BBD A833/OD 3.91-posi