My first mopar "stranded" moment with the HEI setup

dano said
I hope everyone understand that thermal compound is to be used sparingly, its a micro gap filler as it will not work as intended if you have a thick layer of it between your heat source and whatever means you have to conduct heat.

BigBlockMopar said
HEI modules with bad ground and/or too low voltage can act up and give rough idle.
Also, HEI modules start to heat up quickly at idle rpm's.

Low engine idle-RPM, and almost no charge from a stock Mopar alternator, AND insufficient cooling of the module = Shortened Lifespan.

If they can't get rid of their heat, they'll fail easily.
Had it happen recently. Did have a spare with me, but it was already toast. Great fun...

My current HEI module setup (I have 2 of them mounted under the hood, so I can swap wires in 5 seconds) also has forced air cooling, like in a computer CPU.
I would really like to wire it so the CPU-fan comes on when the module gets over a certain temperature.
Don't have the CPU fans hooked up yet, as they about 1 AMP in power, so they need a seperate power source first.

But I notice the module and its copper cooling block heat up quickly when the engine is idling.

View attachment 1714998400

Mine is on a 1/8 x 1.5 x 3 inch flat aluminum plate mounted to body metal.
In AZ if it was going to get too hot it would have already,and this is the newer 8 pin module that doesn't die from lower voltages.
Remember, they normally ran in a distributor that was 180-220 all the time and they were fine there.