[Sun Tuned]

Friend has a GM crate 350 for a lil 56 he has. Runs like total garbage. Has exactly 0 miles on it. Fresh out the crate. Bout 10 mins runtime. Wants me to see if I can figure it out. So I says I'll give it a shot.

Check timing.
At 10 degrees. Go to restart.
Hit key to crank, loud report out of tailpipe.
$&@$, try again, big flame out the carb!

Ok....

Let's pull the whole HEI and go home with that and have a look.

Looks good on machine.

Any takers?

[242177P]

Bad ground? As in way too much paint??

[77 TRASHCAN]

Oh boy...
I've seen a lot of crate 350's advertised, unlike old days when the was 1 or 2.

One mis Fire through intake, one out exhaust...
Could engine have a different firing order from the conventional 18436572? Like maybe a 4-7 swap?
I've seen a Buick 455 run and drive, with plug wires routed backwards...did not run well, obviously....

[DOC]

I would re-check the valve adjustment and plug wire quality. did he go in the right direction for firing order?

[Sun Tuned]

As it pertains to this thread and Pontiacs in general, let me illustrate what ensued yesterday morning. My father stood there and witnessed the whole deal as it unfolded.

So obviously this new engine was not doing anything consistently, I pulled the distributor. In the regular distributor machine it went and the curve checked. Knew pretty much where that was gonna be but as they change these things up about every 6months or so I wanted to see. It was acceptable for the time being. 8 cylinders... one arrow for each and spaced 45 degrees apart each as it should be.

Hmmm.... out of that and into the spark tester I built years back. Put on a cutaway cap and hooked it up and let her fly.

Spark kernel traveling roughly 3/4" inch to each terminal in the cap and erratically/inconsistently jumping back and forth to the next cap terminal ahead. Clearly that's a problem!

I grab timing light and see reluctor is halfway between teeth on pickup coil when it fires. So I reach down on floor pull used crusty module from a customer distributor that I know to be good. Works perfectly.

So apparently we've got a wacky module here. Here is where the day went straight to hell. The guy that owns the car says no problem I'll just go get one of those things. That's fine as all I've got left in shop are used ones as I need to go pick up a new batch of parts anyhow and I'm fine with him wanting a new one...

It's Saturday and we all pile in the truck and go to town which is 10 minutes away. I'm going to describe the events exactly as they unfolded and name names in the process .he has an account with Autozone as he owns an automotive body shop and a damn good one at that. So since he's driving we go there....

8:05 am go buy two modules, one for a spare, one to fix distributor, go home install first one.
8:35 am install first one refire.... same problem module defective. 8:45 am Have a spare install it... module defective, tach twitching wildly, spark very erratically popping and cutting out.

[Sun Tuned]

8:55am carry two back to autozone return them. Guys there are real nice and throw them into defectiveparts bin as they know me and know I know something about this stuff so they not gonna try and resell this. Ask if we need two more from the hub? nah we gonna try something else this morning.
9:15 oreilleys... leave with brand new unscratched Standard ignition module (1)
9::25 ish install standard module... somewhat better but then round 2500 rpm starts jumping terminals and popping again. Now I'm really getting irritated.

9:40 back at oreilleys and we return that one and get money back. Leave and go to napa...
Explain to napa what deal is and ask if there is something awry with this damn thing will they take it back and give Kenny his money back or are we saddled with a replacement. Parts guy says well... we really don't return electrical parts. I say thank you and begin to leave and he says I can do that. I can do whatever I need to during the week at my parts places as they've known me but here they really don't but we get a TP45 and go.
10:10 install TP45 and swallow hard. Works fine for about 1 minute, warms up then begins spitting and sputtering and spark begins to turn orange.
$&@,"@&),$&@$)....
10:25 back at napa, guy sees look on my face and realizes he's not getting played, but also realizes he thinks I know something he don't.gives Kenny his money back and we politely leave.

I go back home and find another spare used module clean it up and install it. Yep, it's a crusty old GM 990 and it works flawlessly all the way up to 7300 rpm.

Moral of the story... if the professionals have issues, what the hell is the weekend guy to do? Imagine all the headache trying to diagnose all that in a hot running car. Now mind you brand new obviously don't mean a damn thing. The original module got zonked in my opinion because of the muffler shop not disconnecting the battery before welding onehell of an exhaust system on the car.

But my issue is not that,,, what the hell has happened to quality control these days. 4 modules from 3 different parts houses defective???? And thesehad not been used and returned, that you can see as the spade terminals leave a telltale scratch mark on them. I'll tell ya about these Autozone modules later but suffice it to say they used to be better than you think for reasons you'd never guess. All 4 should easily fire and run a car very well or at least they used to.

Something is very wrong with the quality control on these lately. Very wrong.

[Sun Tuned]

Everything on this engine was right on the mark as dad and I installed it. Firing order the whole 9 yards.
Engine was installed and other work done. May have had 10 minutes of run time after the initial breakin. Lil hydraulic roller deal, we ran it 20 minutes or so and adjusted stuff and let it be till they got the rest of car put together. I noticed it ran really badly after the muffler shop thing, so that's where this story starts.

[Tom Vaught]

Thanks for the great information as usual Sun Tuned.
Best to you and your Dad.

Tom V.

[Richie Hoffman]

Glad it’s not only me with defective parts just had 2 msd billet ready to run bad and 3 dui performance distributors and a melling select oil pump bad after 1500 miles all different engines

[catc]

Wow,that's discouraging about those Autozone modules, Bob,.....you've told me about them....where the hell does a guy go get reliable modules anymore??? appreciate the story.....Mike C.

[Sun Tuned]

You know I would have said that it was an isolated case, but 3 stores??? Clearly all 3 modules were manufactured differently. As far as the outer shell construction all 3 were vividly different . But I will say that maybe they are all pretty much using the same internal circuitry to an extent. In other words they may be using the same ic supplier. I don't know.
But I used yesterday as an experiment of sorts.
Just to see what the market offers in 2019.

I learned quite a bit actually. Previously I would seek out something that worked well and when I found it I'd buy fairly large quantities of them at one time. That saved me running all over every 3-4 days and I could depend on the batch quantity. I don't believe this would work year after year as ordinarily when I run low or out I usually return back and buy more. I learned along time ago never say always. It stands to reason that there are fewer and fewer of these HEI cars on the road today Vs the newest whizbang fuel infected cars we all drive daily. So it also stands to reason that there's no need to make HEI modules at the same rate and pace as a module for a 2016 vehicle. As such we are in the minority, and to add to that we get what we get. They will continue to source the cheapest supplier to maximize profits especially on items that do not move as fast as others. It's the way the world works. They will continue to supply these parts till they get tired of them not selling them then they will just quit. At that point a very little fish will try to offer them and the money just ain't there. So it becomes what it becomes.

I need some more anyhow so I will stay on this in the next month or so and let you all know what I find. 25 years ago I bought 16 different modules and 12 different coils. I tested these things in 1000 rpm increments and made a very extensive chart. I came up with what actually worked the best and had info at the grass roots level on what did what. What cut it and what didn't. I'll be doing this again soon it looks like. As you can't always depend on one manufacturer using the same supplier forever. Therefore you can't always depend on the same end result as you always expected forever either.

Food for thought...

The GM 990 module that everyone lived that had the raised "GM" script and the white date/990 numbers said in ink s"Singapore" on the back was ditched in favor of the same part number but made by wells about 2007/2008. They have changed it again twice since then. It is obviously not the old one we all liked.

Wells made the duralast module az sells. The last ones I'd used worked very well. You and I talked about that and why. The new ones I saw yesterday have a part number etched on top of the case like a hollograph. Something has changed folks and I did not like what I saw yesterday at all.

Looks like I got some work to do.

Say Rocky, you wanna write us another article??

[Sun Tuned]

Oh! For the time being my fine folks at Performance distributors sell dynamods. I'd use those till I sort out what's the deal. I never had an issue with one but at 59.00 each they might not be everyone's cup of tea. Till I can find a viable cheaper alternative to go with that I'd say use those.
But I'd like to test a buch of stuff before I say concretely what's good and what's not as far as 2019.

[ponyakr]

So, are we to assume that all the performance brand modules sold by Summit are junk ?

https://www.summitracing.com/search/...7%2B4294926221

Better to go back to points ?

[Sun Tuned]

No I haven't tested anything but the four I bought yesterday from auto zone, oreilleys, and napa. No more , no less.
You wanna send me some I'll be glad to test them.

I spent 500.00 years ago doing just this to see what's good and what's not. And at least another 1000.00 buying coils to do same.

No the sky is not falling on your head. Calm down and let's look further into what's going on. Test!... don't guess.

[Richie Hoffman]

Most parts sold today are price driven nobody wants to pay for good stuff I won’t use cheaper stuff anymore more getting burned to much companies won’t stand behind stuff they’ll sell I personally make good on stuff I install customer do not want to spend on good parts I won’t work on it anymore my Rant for the day bad quality is killing me I could name a lot of places quality has gotten bad but I won’t

[Half-Inch Stud]

Is Firing order is reversed vs Pontiac?

[straycat]

I always kept a supply of GM modules on the shelf, and try to buy only made in USA parts or at least a trusted brand. Of course MSD isn't the MSD of old plus I read where the Chinese were unloading bogus MSDs in this country.

[Old Goat 67]

Originally Posted by Sun Tuned

Oh! For the time being my fine folks at Performance distributors sell dynamods. I'd use those till I sort out what's the deal. I never had an issue with one but at 59.00 each they might not be everyone's cup of tea. Till I can find a viable cheaper alternative to go with that I'd say use those.
But I'd like to test a bunch of stuff before I say concretely what's good and what's not as far as 2019.

Hey $59 versus a $150 tow job? No more discussion.

Only thing I need now is a link....

[1968GTO421]

Originally Posted by Old Goat 67

Hey $59 versus a $150 tow job? No more discussion.

Only thing I need now is a link....

Here yah go:
http://performancedistributors.com/p...ories/modules/

[adynes]

I wonder if they have the circuit in the module flipped to where the wires from the pickup coil need to be reversed (triggering on the wrong part of the waveform). Would be an interesting test to try. And if that's the case, it would be good to know for someone who might need a replacement on the road, and can only get one of these bad ones.