ok trying to get my 468 tunnel ram bbc fired. a good friend of mine gave (loan ,borrowed) me an ignition system that came straight off his chevelle.

mallory dist. with one of those photo cell eye.......and a msd blaster coil.

pretty simple set up just to get it fired right?

this is how its wired up.

the original hei hot wire is connected to the new ballast resister. with the red wire from the mallory dist.

on the other side of the ballast resister is the power source to the coil. positive side.

now the neg. side of the coil runs to the mallory green wire on the dist.

which only leaves you the brown ground wire from the dist.


brown dist wire ---- ground
green dist wire----- neg. side of coil
red dist wire----connected to the hei hot wire on Ballest resister.
coil positive side hooked to ballast resister.

now we did have the hei hot wire put on the positive side of the coil and the dist was recieving lower voltage thru the ballast resister.

this was done first but the coil was getting very hot.

next we put the hot wire on the same side of the dist. so the coil is getting lower voltage.
same thing coil hot and no spark.

next disconnected green wire from coil. coil no longer getting hot. or smoking the ballest resister.

as soon as the green wire from the dist is hooked up to the coil it heats everything up like its ground something out. looked at the wire cant see nothing that would be causing failure.

tried different coil no luck either

Dennis,
Go here & see if it helps.
;) Mallory Stuff (http://www.centuryperformance.com/mallory/unitest.asp#simple%20terms)

Yep,I had a mallory unlite on my prostreet nova,and the ignition module took a crap.It costs like $90.I was told by someone to never mix MSD and Mallory stuff.At the time I had the Mallory dist,and a MSD 6AL box,so I switched to a MSD dist and never had a problem again.People tell me the Mallory's ignition module is known for dying.

photo cell module is bad. the green wire was shorting out somewhere inside the module ...tore the module apart (ouch 90 dollar part) couldnt see where the problem was but it was making contact somewhere in the ground circuit. owell i guess i will come up with something else to fire the motor. im sure not going to spend 100 bucks on a dist that is on loan to me.

good thing he hooked everything up cuase if i would have done it ...it would have my fault....lol

Hey Adam....The modules are not known for dying unless you hook them up to 12 volts(without a ballast resistor). I've used 2 conversion kits and 2 distributors and never had a module fail,had a distributor wear out before the module failed.

Originally posted by Rapid Robert:
Hey Adam....The modules are not known for dying unless you hook them up to 12 volts(without a ballast resistor). I've used 2 conversion kits and 2 distributors and never had a module fail,had a distributor wear out before the module failed. Well,when mine died,that's what everyone was telling me.All of my friends even told me it was going to happen even before it died.Switched to the billet MSD dist,and it's been there for 7 years now with no problems.