I'm working on connecting the MSD 6AL ignition and right now am having problems getting it to work. For the Slant's that have original electronic ignition do we use the magnetic pickup or the white one and if we use the white one where does it hook up to. For the magnetic pickup if we use that which of the two wires coming from the distributor are positive and which one's negative, or does it matter? I got everything hooked up and tried to start it but it would just turn but not start, this reminded me of the troubleshooting problem where if you have the magnetic pickup grounded the engine will only turn but not start. Or it could be that I hooked up the small red wire up to the wrong part of the ignition wire setup. It got to late for me to keep on working on it but when I start the info. at the top of my question would be insurance(since last time I used the magnetic pickup).

Thanks for all the help.

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.

This may sound stupid, but I just did a conversion this week on my 1967 slant six valiant. I had the
same problem of having everything hooked up, turn but didn't start. I
found out that my rotor cap was 180 degrees off, where it's suppose to be.
It was on firing on #6 cylinder instead of #1 top-dead center. Once I
made that simple change, it fired right up. Hope this helps

Converting from already electronic ignition...you need to use the small gauge red wire. The white one does NOT get used.

Small gauge red wire should be hooked to your original coil + wire. (Ignition switched 12V....needs power when key is in START and RUN positions)
Heavy red to Batt +
Heavy Black to Batt -
Orange to coil +
Sm Black to coil - These are the ONLY wires that should be connected to the coil.

Purple and green to electronic dist...I forget which is positive and which is negative. The polarity of these wires does matter. If they are backwards it will not fire. Sounds like you may have them reversed.

I will check my dist when I get home from work (about 1 hour) to see which wire from the dist is hooked to the corresponding purple/green wire from the MSD.

-S/6

I have black and white wires on my dist. Black goes to MSD Green, White to MSD violet/purple.

Thanks for both your comments. On mine the wires to the distributor are whitish and tanish(both are fairly faded so I don't know the exact color). The small guage red wire sounds like my main problem(I tried both polarities). I had it hooked up somewhere else. Tommorow I will get a chance to work on it more(I have finals tommorow and after I saw I couldn't get it up and running quick I made sure that it was at least running, missing finals wouldn't be too good for the GPA ). I'll cross my fingers and hope that after testing out the wiring and checking the cap it runs.

Thanks again, this forums great, I don't know of many places where you can get the answer back within two hours and not have to pay to do so .

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.

Good luck on your finals.

...and with your MSD

-S/6

I had the same problem, my deal was I hooked up the small gauge red wire to a 12v accesory, it has to be hooked up to the original coil wire, this is the "trigger" wire that tells the MSD to turn on. BTW, the white wire is only used when you hook up the timing advance dial. here is a pic of the "BRAINS" of my Charger (it may have a 440) but I have a similar setup in my slant dart.

Make sure the original +12v wire going to the coil ONLY goes to the small red msd wire. When using an msd box, the only wires attached to the coil should be the two coming out of the box. If you want to install a tach, use the tach output on the box instead of coil -

go to the MSD site and there is diagrams of mopar with points hookup and Mopar with Magnetic pickup,,,,shows what color wire goes to which componet....it shows the green as a neg(-) and violet as positive(+) go to dist. with dist black as neg(-) and dist orange as positive(+).....I am considering to do this setup myself in a few weeks, is it really this simple?

Yes. But don't forget you need new wires, and possibly a new coil too.

Hardest part for me was figuring out where I wanted to mount the box

-S/6

Well, other than the fact that it sounds like the color of wires coming out of my distributor are strange(tan and whitish), everything went okay. I got the thing hooked up but unfortuneately had the polarity on the dist. mixed up and idle was horrible. After scratching my head I switched polarity and voila, good idle. Oddly I thought the car wouldn't run with polarity switched wrong(sorta hoped it wouldn't, the car didn't sound too happy ). Anyway, after getting it hooked up right I'm happy cause throttle's better, idles a little better, and acceleration is much better(though I can't tell if it's on the high or low end, I just know that forty comes quicker than it used to). As for the finals , think I did well, though to pass the classes I only need 10%. Oh yeah, and initial problem with starting car was the small red wire.

lee329@aol.com: Yes, it is simple, but expensive. and mounting was hard to decide, I decided to place where my washer resevior was(don't ask me what I'm gonna do about that, I have ideas but nothing finished). Also, I had the original coil so I had to replace that($50), and the ignition cost 200-250. If you get really fancy then you can get MSD plugs for 90-100(not required and don't know how much they help). The installation initially took about two hours top because of the polarity problem I had, then it took me about another two hours to make it pretty. I plan on takin all remenants of my old ignition out after I've had the MSD in for a month, just in case something happens. Also their's a problem called run-on that might make installation harder, I haven't done anything about it yet but when I shut the car off it often will keep running for about a second afterwards, in the instructions it shows how to cure this but I just sort of take one thing at a time.

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.

Oh, coil wires are only mandatory if you have solid core wires(technically the ignition will run, but not to it's potential)

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.

thanks Shivadart and Super6...Yes I think mounting is going to be the toughest part...I guess the two heavy wires need to be connected to the battery, and the coil will be across the bay...just hopes wire will be long enough.....

It sounds like I know where you're putting it(on the driver's side, correct?). For the spot you can connect the big red to the +starter side, the negat may need lengthening though easiest would probably be connected to the frame ground(I didn't have to worry about this, when I converted to a rear battery I stuck a little junction for my battery ground that connects it to the frame and sheetmetal, and luckily the bolt that connected them was right next to the MSD, lucky coincidence of good engineering ). Other than that you won't need to lengthen the mag. pickup but you will have to lengthen the wires to the coil. The small red should be fine if you follow your original +coil wire back a bit to connect. Just remember when lengthening wires to use one guage larger, good connectors, and solder the connectors in place. Prefferably stick a piece of shrink tube on the wire to cover the connection and/or use paint on electrical tape. Regular electrical tape is okay for short term such as testing but since it'll eventually unwrap itself it shouldn't be used for long term

This info is for a Dart but should really be fairly universal with the slant, there's only so much the companies can do with an engine compartment )

Anway, hope that helps in your thinking about the MSD.

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My car may be slow to sixty, but at least it's been reliably slow to sixty for more than thirty years.

It will run, but every other electrical component in the car will go nuts. I tried my MSD with the soild core wires I had on at the time of installation out of curiosity.....my headlights almost looked like strobes

And the radio made horrid static...

-S/6

Shivadart;
That good info, thanks, I will do that when the time comes(soon)...mine is also a 73 Dart but a 4 door...going to paint car in a few weeks when it gets warmer...........Jerry