i was looking through a shop key at school and there was a recall campaigne on my 85 trans am ignition. it said the stress of high voltage and high temp of engine work together and break down the epoxy around the coils in the HEI setup. i called the dealer and they said the recall ended in 96. the recall said that they replace the HEI setup with a conventional module, coil, and distributor cap. i want to do this myself because i dont want to pay to have the dealer do it. someone told me i will need to change my whole distributor and everything is this true. what should i need to do this?

 

Well if it is true (have yet to see anything on the ignition systems) The epoxy they are talking about should be on the ignition coil (replace it with another brand ie Moroso, Mallory, Accel) The module?? I'm still running my origional from 1985. And what do they mean "conventional module"? you need the module that is supposed to be in there for the computer controls.
No, you don't need to replace the entire dist., you can buy all the parts to rebuild it and do that if you want.

 

would i be better off getting a whole distributor setup and just replacing the whole thing or should i just replace the coil.

 

I have an 85 IROC I bought new and I'm still running all the origional parts, except coil, I bought an accel supercoil while troubleshooting an idle quality problem (that wasn't the problem though). If it is still working and not causing any problems, I wouldn't replace it.

 

Hmmm...

It was my understanding that the 'recall' involved changing to a later module, coil, and a narrower plug gap, not swapping the distributor.

If its running ok, leave it alone.

 

its not running ok thats why im worried about it its running like crap. it takes forever to start and when it does finaly start it idles like crap. but only sometimes. when it is acting up it also dogs really bad.

 

What? What did you mean replace the HEI with a "conventional" module, coil and distributer? You can't possibly be suggesting that GM's TSB said to go back to a points system. It's not possible.

I don't even see what was unique about the 85 HEI setup. GM had been using the same coil-in-cap HEI setup since the 70s, and used it through 91 on some of their vehicles. If for some reason GM decided to try a new epoxy on the coil in 85, I don't see why anything besides the coil would need to be changed, and considering how unlikely it is for the majority of 85s out there to still have the original coil, I wouldn't worry much about it.

 

i will print the TSB monday at school and find a way to put it on the board. im only wondering about this because my car is doing what it says in the TSB. i ordered a new coil im am going to just try that if that isnt the case then i will have to trouble shoot and find what is.