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Vacuum Advance

Well @Billccm I did not follow the "professor of B-Body kueneman" golden rule and I'm paying for it..... OEM or nothing :)
 
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Has the professor considered the Chrysler orange box ignition?
 
JimKueneman said:
I do not what it visible under the hood and does Chrysler still make these boxes?
Click to expand...
Yes mopar performance is still made in the USA. It is oem for 73 to 81 Chrysler cars. My duster and charger used this system and never a failure.
 
Orange box has been having some reliability issues over the past few years. If you got an older one, they are awesome. The newer ones I guess are less than stellar on reliability. I also have heard from multiple credible sources that the Chrome box is still made pretty well, but the orange boxes take a crap pretty quickly. Again, this is the newer stuff. I personally had an orange box fail after only a couple years, so I can kinda vouch for the issue myself. Only difference between the boxes is the spark will remain hotter up to a higher RPM and the timing retard feature is not present on the Chrome box as it is in the Orange box. I would get the Chrome box for the extra coin if it were me. Summit was about the cheapest I could find it.

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/dcc-4120534
dcc-4120534.jpg
 
91r/t said:
Orange box has been having some reliability issues over the past few years. If you got an older one, they are awesome. The newer ones I guess are less than stellar on reliability. I also have heard from multiple credible sources that the Chrome box is still made pretty well, but the orange boxes take a crap pretty quickly. Again, this is the newer stuff. I personally had an orange box fail after only a couple years, so I can kinda vouch for the issue myself. Only difference between the boxes is the spark will remain hotter up to a higher RPM and the timing retard feature is not present on the Chrome box as it is in the Orange box. I would get the Chrome box for the extra coin if it were me. Summit was about the cheapest I could find it.

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/dcc-4120534
View attachment 573464
Click to expand...

Why would a feature like timing retard be desirable in the upper RPMs? Also, the chrome box is supposed to be a race unit as it is stated do not run it often under a certain RPM.
 
threewood said:
Why would a feature like timing retard be desirable in the upper RPMs? Also, the chrome box is supposed to be a race unit as it is stated do not run it often under a certain RPM.
Click to expand...

Hell if I know haha. Maybe that is when **** starts melting! :D I think maybe they just start falling off with their ability to handle the RPM and output of spark at that level. I do know the Gold unit is the listed race unit. I don't even know where to buy that one anymore. The chrome box has been in my Roadrunner for the 10 years I have owned it and before that with no issues. The description for the Chrome is as follows from Mopar. "These chrome ignition controllers from Mopar Performance will give you a hotter spark and more ignition capability. They're great for general high performance use up through 8,000 rpm."
 
I got 3 chormed units gone in 2 years :(

culprit... transistor.

Replaced one of them with MJ1005 transistor ( the closer to specs I could find locally ) and FIXED the box, just didn't last long maybe due the same quality issues fo the original ones...

got a real NOS MJ10012 pair of transistors and fit one of them. Waiting to find a car to test it ( my car is dissasembled since 4 years ago )
 
BUT while they worked were GREAT RESPONSIVE UNITS AND REALLY QUICK START!!!!. Once tried an Orange one, and Chromed is superior by far
 
Nacho-RT74 said:
I got 3 chormed units gone in 2 years :(

culprit... transistor.

Replaced one of them with MJ1005 transistor ( the closer to specs I could find locally ) and FIXED the box, just didn't last long maybe due the same quality issues fo the original ones...

got a real NOS MJ10012 pair of transistors and fit one of them. Waiting to find a car to test it ( my car is dissasembled since 4 years ago )
Click to expand...


They should last forever if:

Are not over voltage
Are not over current
Are not over heated

They are 400V 20A parts..... If it is not thermal then I would guess a coil that does not have 1.5 ohms and 8mH of inductance or the base drive circuit is crap and keeping the part in the linear range too long.
 
This is over 20 years ago. My charger had the cheapest coil kragen offered, and I had the orange box and stock distributor. Never an issue over 7 years and about 14k miles.
Same with my duster, and that was 10 years and 80k miles.
 
Found another reason to not run non-ported vacuum to the distributor..... FiTech EFI. If I had the more expensive unit it would have timing control. Modern fuel management uses timing to adjust idle since it is WAY fast to respond then waiting for the lag in change the fuel/air charge in the manifold. The Idle Air Control gets a bit wacky when the idle changes so fast with slight RPM changes due to the vacuum canister moving the timing at idle.... it gets into a feedback loop and oscillates the idle... does not run that much better to fight that problem. Back to ported vacuum next time she gets out of the garage.
 
JimKueneman said:
They should last forever if:

Are not over voltage
Are not over current
Are not over heated

They are 400V 20A parts..... If it is not thermal then I would guess a coil that does not have 1.5 ohms and 8mH of inductance or the base drive circuit is crap and keeping the part in the linear range too long.
Click to expand...


Neither of those conditions are on my car ;). Simply chinesse junk transistors used at factory. Some reason must have for newer Chromed getting diff transistors, not anymore MJ10012s.

FBO stopped the A688 production too for some reason... production being moved to China, so, guess the next step ( BTW also last long around 4 months on my car ).

( over current is not given by the system, is requested by the devices when under voltage is present )
 
They should last forever. But the quality of new parts for our cars are not as good as the original parts. I even had a brand new set of points fail to spark, dropped the old used set back in and it ran fine.
 
91r/t said:
Hell if I know haha. Maybe that is when **** starts melting! :D I think maybe they just start falling off with their ability to handle the RPM and output of spark at that level. I do know the Gold unit is the listed race unit. I don't even know where to buy that one anymore. The chrome box has been in my Roadrunner for the 10 years I have owned it and before that with no issues. The description for the Chrome is as follows from Mopar. "These chrome ignition controllers from Mopar Performance will give you a hotter spark and more ignition capability. They're great for general high performance use up through 8,000 rpm."
Click to expand...

Talking about them melting, I specifically remember replacing two factory boxes on two seperate cars that oozed the jelly all over the firewall. AND,...in the box of wiring and electrical components I got with my GTX was an orange box that was melted into the wad of engine compartment wiring....what a mess!!!!
 
Oh, forgot to say... FBO box failed with FBO coil. MP ones failed with MSD Blaster 2 Coil ( an OLD one which is a smalled diameter canister than newers ). Coil is still running ( or it was last time I used my car ) with Rev-N-Nator module strong
 
threewood said:
Talking about them melting, I specifically remember replacing two factory boxes on two seperate cars that oozed the jelly all over the firewall. AND,...in the box of wiring and electrical components I got with my GTX was an orange box that was melted into the wad of engine compartment wiring....what a mess!!!!
Click to expand...

Yes you guys are smoothing talking me right into ordering one of these right now!
 
Nacho-RT74 said:
Oh, forgot to say... FBO box failed with FBO coil. MP ones failed with MSD Blaster 2 Coil ( an OLD one which is a smalled diameter canister than newers ). Coil is still running ( or it was last time I used my car ) with Rev-N-Nator module strong
Click to expand...

I left the resistor in line with the OEM style coil with my Pertronix. I looked at the waveforms on the coil with a scope and saw no reason to increase the stress on any of the parts by running the full 5A-6A through it with the way I drive.
 
threewood said:
Talking about them melting, I specifically remember replacing two factory boxes on two seperate cars that oozed the jelly all over the firewall. AND,...in the box of wiring and electrical components I got with my GTX was an orange box that was melted into the wad of engine compartment wiring....what a mess!!!!
Click to expand...

THAT IS sometimes lack of voltage, causing overheating trying to suck current... guess what ? stock unsuficient alts at iddle ( my theory at least )
 
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