Hi all, i'm looking to replace my stock distributor and ignition coil with an aftermarket combination. Looking on summit, I have no clue what to buy. I have a 92 camaro rs wired up as an 88 305 tpi. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

 

A lot of it comes down to personal preference but MSD and Malory have good products, try to avoid Accel. A multi spark box is always a good choice, depending on how you drive you can get more power and a little better milage from just day to day driving. It doesn't help for high RPM's but it does help. I used one for years and liked what it did.

 

Why?

Wallet too heavy to carry around?

 

be sure to get a poly gear for your new diz as the stocker wont cross over because the cam gear and diz gear are a pair after they have been ran, sorta like rear end gears.

your stock diz shaft is .428 and most aftermarket diz shafts
are .490 or .500.

 

I'm looking at a multiple spark discharge system from MSD and an MSD distributor. Can anyone tell me what pickup style, and advnace style I would want? I don't really know anything about distributors so thanks for any help.

 

Why?

What benefit are you looking to receive, other than weight reduction concentrated at the driver's wallet? Your car too reliable as it is now, need to put something in it that fails once in a while so you can spend more money on it?

 

To the OP ,

If there is nothing wrong with your stock system and the engine is running well now , the miniscule possible gains in HP and gas mileage will NEVER equal the amount of $$$ your about to $pend ... Put simply , if it's more power you seek , and your stock distributor/coil are in good working order now , look to spend your performance dollars elsewhere , cause your stock distributor AIN"T the bottleneck that the aftermarket companies would have you to believe ...

 

Right now the problem I'm having is that I can't set the timing on my car. If I unplug the single tan wire (I forget what the connector is for) the timing goes nuts and I can't set it as I am supposed to. The car doesn't have the power it should and I think the timing may need to be turned up but I can't set it. I have a feeling that my distributor or ignition coil may be on their way out so I want to replace them. If you have suggestions that will save me money I'm all for it, but I kind of need to know really soon. Thanks

 

You set the timing by turning the distributor.

Don't even BOTHER with the tan wire. If you just want to see what happens when you change it, then mark where the dist is now, and change it, and see what happens.

Emptying your wallet for a bunch of buzzword aftermarket stuff won't make any of that behave the slightest bit different.

When you unplug the tan wire, the ECM no longer applies its "offset" to the pulse from the dist, so the spark occurs at the instant of the trigger pulse. Not sure how this constitutes "going crazy". This is called the "base" timing, which should be something close to 0° (might be 4° or 6° or so, but whatever the exact # you might look up in a book, close to 0°); then when the ECM regains control over it by plugging the wire back in, it should go to where it REALLY needs to be at idle, which is most likely in the mid 20s somewhere depending on the engine temp and various other things.

All the aftermarket bank-account emptiers in the world won't change that.

This is why I asked you "why"... sometimes there's a good reason for those things, but most often, as in this case, they're just a waste of money.

 

3rd gens are blessed with a very good ignition system from the factory.

The only reason to change it would be if you converted to carb... because the stock dist. works with a ECM..


when I had the projection system on my 383 I re-used the stock 7 pin dist. from my 305..(lol the only part worth re-using) & a new MSD coil because the OEM coil was shot.

The only thing I did to modify the system was add a MSD 6AL box.

 

To follow up that last comment, the car was converted from tbi to tpi, would the distributor need to match the ecm? It now has an ecm for a tpi.

And if you try to set the timing with the tan wire still plugged in, isn't the computer still in control of the timing? The computer should just correct itself for any discrepancies caused by adjusting the timing with that plugged in I would think.

 

No need to change it for that; they're the exact same part.

The computer can't possibly "correct for discrepancies". That's not what it does. All it does, is an electronic analog to what a mechanical distributor does; i.e. as the engine's operating conditions change (load, RPM, etc.) it produces an output pulse to the coil that is "offset" in time to the input it receives from the mechanical parts. Only difference is, the mech type has springs and weights to create the RPM dependency, and a vacuum diaphragm to create the load one; where the electronic one has a pre-programmed table in its "chip" that it goes and looks up those things from. End result is the same. Which is, if you give it a mechanical offset by twiddling it in the block, then the spark will ALWAYS be that fixed amount ahead of or behind where the factory designed it to be. Which may or may not be "the" "best" time for it to occur, anyway; the factory's timing tables must serve MANY masters, about the least of which is how well the car runs. They're FAR more concerned with emissions, gas mileage, ability to run acceptably at all altitudes from sea level to 15,000 feet and all weather from Death Valley in August to Minnesota in February to South Florida in April and everything in between, emissions, gas mileage, tolerance for crappy fuel, emissions, gas mileage, and maybe a few other things. Oh I forgot emissions and gas mileage... better add those to the list. And of course, the most important things to the factory are emissions and gas mileage. Did I mention emissions and gas mileage? Well if I didn't, better throw em in now .... emissions and gas mileage are the 2 things they optimize their spark tables for at the expense of EVERYTHING else.