When did your ignition module fail?

-
Mr Gorsky

Mr Gorsky

I know words, I have the best words...
Joined
Jun 26, 2015
Messages
1,194
Reaction score
502
Location
Sea of Tranquility, Luna.
On occasion I drive my Demon to work.

Yesterday afternoon I drove it in for a nightshift. At four in the morning at the end of shift it wouldn't start. Air cleaner off, iPhone light turned on...pump pump, plenty of fuel. Key on, screwdriver shoved down the #1 lead boot, second screwdriver shorting the starter relay....no spark against the header pipe. Into the trunk to fetch my spare module, she fired up first turn of the key. At least I didn't have to sleep in the car!!

Mopar orange box, about eight years old it was.

Share your tale of ignition box woe :)
 
Ran a junk yard pull orange box daily for, I don't know, 6 years?
Cross country and back.
It started giving me trouble in 2013 maybe.
From them on it was old junk yard boxes.
Recently had a wiring meltdown.
(There's a tread on here about the meltdown. I found a original factory backwards wiring on the coil pick up when I rewired the engine compartment.)
Rewired the car an went with the FBO ECU and a Flame Thrower coil in the daily driver.
No complaints with that set up.
Auto parts stores only carry cheep, no good ECUs now.
Yea, with one of those you better carry a spare.
 
My last one to fail was an auto parts store cheapy only about a month old. Died in my garage at home thankfully. Just use old take offs now.

Cley
 
I ran my HEI module for 8 years, 3 of which I was daily commuting. Then when I swapped from a slant6 to a 360 somewhere along the way I lost that module (no idea how). I put a new one on and bought a spare on Amazon to keep in the glovebox since they're cheap. I'm glad I did. That new HEI module died after just a few weeks of use in a Target parking lot!
Now I carry 2 spares in the glovebox and they're both different brands :)
 
My FBO box let go, on a long stretch of highway,on its last ride of the season, before winter, no spare, had to get towed home. Now I carry a couple spares, in both my Barracudas, along with a ballast resister in each. Box was 3 yrs old, that was 3 yrs ago, no problems since.
barracudadave67
 
The orange boxes have been crap for well over 10 years now. I never had one totally fail that left me somewhere, but I've had several that would start causing misfires and timing issues at RPM's over about 4k. Below that they would work mostly ok. Upgraded to chrome boxes, no problems. I'd either buy a Mopar chrome box or something from FBO FBO Ignition, Distributor tuning and Carburetion Professionals, FBO Ignition systems, Ford Ignition, Mopar Ignition, Ford Distributors, Mopar Distributors, Ford distributor curving, Mopar distributor curving, HEI Ignition, MSD ignition tuning,. Using anything from Mopar, even a chrome box, and I'd carry a spare just in case.
 
Not to bash on MP electronic ignition because the OEM boxes are great, but this is why I switched to HEI. I got sick of my aftermarket boxes failing. Had a couple of ballast resistors fail too.

OEM boxes are too hard to find so I gave up and went HEI.

72bluNblu said:
The orange boxes have been crap for well over 10 years now. I never had one totally fail that left me somewhere, but I've had several that would start causing misfires and timing issues at RPM's over about 4k. Below that they would work mostly ok. Upgraded to chrome boxes, no problems. I'd either buy a Mopar chrome box or something from FBO FBO Ignition, Distributor tuning and Carburetion Professionals, FBO Ignition systems, Ford Ignition, Mopar Ignition, Ford Distributors, Mopar Distributors, Ford distributor curving, Mopar distributor curving, HEI Ignition, MSD ignition tuning,. Using anything from Mopar, even a chrome box, and I'd carry a spare just in case.
Click to expand...
Best to steer clear of FBO for anything other than their limiter plates. See this thread:

FBO Systems

It seems that their boxes are nothing more than HEI modules with a rev limiter built in. Greatly overpriced.
 
Last edited:
I had an interesting deal, thought it was my module on a stock '80 W150, it would occasionally not start or die like it's spark but the module tested good. It ended up being the wheel pickup "eye" in the distributor had come un-riveted from the slide plate & could move evough not to read the wheel.

HEI units, jumped a car once & the person insisted on them hooking theirs up, they barely touched + to a fender lip while hooking up & mine died & it killed the module. I dropped a complete distributor about 1' to the ground on its side while swapping a motor & it lost the low side of the module & would only run above 2500rpm. Very weird, it was nothing or idle at 2500 & run fine from there up.

I run a Mallory dual point now in my daily.
 
kiss said:
Not to bash on MP electronic ignition because the OEM boxes are great, but this is why I switched to HEI. I got sick of my aftermarket boxes failing. Had a couple of ballast resistors fail too.

OEM boxes are too hard to find so I gave up and went HEI.


Best to steer clear of FBO for anything other than their limiter plates. See this thread:

FBO Systems

It seems that their boxes are nothing more than HEI modules with a rev limiter built in. Greatly overpriced.
Click to expand...

Huh, hadn't seen that about FBO before. Had seen a few threads where people were happy/recommended their products, but that was years ago when I was doing the ignition on the Challenger. They did always seem pricey, which is why I don't have any of their stuff. I run a Pertronix plug and play billet distributor in my Challenger and a Mallory Unilite electronic distributor in my Duster. I did run the Challenger with the stock mopar electronic set up, which is when I had the issues with the orange boxes and switched to a chrome box before going to the Pertronix. Didn't have any issues with the chrome box before I went to the Pertronix, I didn't want to get into welding up the timing slots etc and my Challenger runs a ton of advance so that's why I went with the aftermarket set up. Ironically enough FBO wasn't selling the timing plates back then. The mopar set up is in my '71 GT now although it hasn't been on the road with it yet.
 
mopar orange box, less than 1yr old. Was giving the dart a once over the day before a 200 mile drive out of state. Was a hectic night ! Been running a hi-rev 7500 box, no troubles since.
 
Had one Orange fail around 1995 on my Coronet (now owned by may Dad, has a Chrome box). I have a Chrome Box on the GTS and the orange is in the glove box.

Funny, a coworker has a 73' Nova he drives almost daily, classic 350/350 combo. Said he's been through 3 HEI modules in the last 2 months.

I've seen the same with Duraspark boxes as well, no one make any one of the 3 (Mopar, HEI, Dura) with any quality other than maybe FBO. I've never had one.
 
Last edited:
kiss said:
....Now I carry 2 spares in the glovebox and they're both different brands :)
Click to expand...

Hahaha.

I was more nervous driving the 20 miles home after that nightshift than I was a few months back when I did a four hundred mile round trip....because I had used up my spare module!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
-

Back
Top