MSD Retard box

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DIY with some resistors and a 12 detent pot.

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MSD RPM and Retard Chip Ohm / Resistance Values - Dragstuff
 
This will show all of you nice folk how dumb I really am.
4 posts after my initial Q. and I yet to understand anything.

Please in layman terms...
Will I need any chips for this machine or are they already in this box ?
Seeing it has a dial already stationed with numerical positions on the face of the box for you to just go to the actual retarding you need (or, in my case, are, lol)
Or are the numbers just there to show you this is were you need to position the dial to get the timing you want, now that you have the chips (installed) in their designated area. With the advantage of having a multitude of degrees you can use... Because/With these chips/modules.
Compared to the other boxes I've seen that seem to be digital and have 2-3 degrees positions you can retard the timing by just turning the dials on the back of those machines?

Thanks waaaaaay in advance.
 
MAPS said:
This will show all of you nice folk how dumb I really am.
4 posts after my initial Q. and I yet to understand anything.

Please in layman terms...
Will I need any chips for this machine or are they already in this box ?
Seeing it has a dial already stationed with numerical positions on the face of the box for you to just go to the actual retarding you need (or, in my case, are, lol)
Or are the numbers just there to show you this is were you need to position the dial to get the timing you want, now that you have the chips (installed) in their designated area. With the advantage of having a multitude of degrees you can use... Because/With these chips/modules.
Compared to the other boxes I've seen that seem to be digital and have 2-3 degrees positions you can retard the timing by just turning the dials on the back of those machines?

Thanks waaaaaay in advance.
Click to expand...
I use a similar set up but maybe a little bit more advanced I would say. And a little bit more expensive LOL...I have is a start / retard... It has that same feature on it but it also has I start feature as well. If I'm not mistaken that one you can just change your timing on the Fly... The one I have you can do two different features. The first one is the retard for starting the car. It's mostly used for people with a locked out distributor meaning a drag race application where the distributor is set let's say at all in at 35 degrees all of the time meaning it never moved at all from that. That makes it really hard to start the car so this feature lets you retard the timing x amount at startup and once the car starts reaching some RPM the timing swings back to the 35 degrees. The other feature is a signaled timing retard meaning when you give it a low voltage signal as in an activation button it will retard the timing for that momentary amount of time you're giving it a signal. Like what I use it for nitrous. Nitrous is much more efficient so it doesn't need as much timing. The basic rule of thumb is to take two degrees of timing out for every 50 horsepower of nitrous. So in my case where I have two 50 horsepower plates on my car adding up to 100 horsepower I have my timing retard set for 4 degrees. So as I hit my nitrous button to activate the nitrous and also sends a signal to the timing retard and retards the timing four degrees at that moment.
When one of these units is installed it naturally retards your timing four or five degrees.. I can't remember so as soon as it's installed you have to reset your timing to accommodate for this feature. In the instructions it says that's done to synchronize for accuracy....
I may be wrong but I think the unit you're looking at will again retard the timing on the Fly meaning and meant for what I understand if you're on the freeway and you want to dial back your timing a few degrees for fuel mileage or something like that... It doesn't need a signal to activate it just it's done right there on the Fly...
 
The retard feature can only retard, it wont advance (that would be impossible to trigger the coil before the reluctor/points hit) so you install it and then you'll have to set it to 0 and then retime your distributor to read 0. It will be like 10 out, that way the box at 0 will have no change on your static timing and the higher numbers will retard their values. So your answer is no, that's a stand alone passive retard box. The MSD will use it at a certain NO2 trigger window or use it outright depending on what MSD is used.
 
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