New Distributor

I thought they were plug and play.

Do you have the directions from Mallory? Its 3 wires....

Coils from MSD are decent, I recently emailed them for what model would work on my RRC. An MSD tech recommended the PN 8207 (MSD Blaster SS Coil) ; which can be mounted in any direction. This coil is silicone sealed I think. The other oil filled MSD coil (don't have the pn #) must be mounted straight up and down

hope this helps

Capt

I run the oil filled MSD coil in the stock location laying on it's side and haven't had any problems because of it.

Sure smoothed things out a lot over the stock coil (along w/ new Magnacore wires and a new amplified module).

I have a Mallory Unilite on my 4.0L. I don't remember the model number but I'm sure it's different than yours given I'm using a 4 barrel carb. Anyway, I opted for the Mallory Promaster Coil and bought it from Summit for about $65.

I just did recently. The wiring is straight forward, but I also replaced my coil with a Mallory unit (mounted sideways in same location as old coil). I did however have a defective vacuum advance on my new unit, and was having a lot of detonation. Mallory was good to me and shipped me another unit and it works fine now.

Have you already purchased the mallory? I dropped an MSD distributor in mine and only had to splice two wires.

robertf said:

Have you already purchased the mallory? I dropped an MSD distributor in mine and only had to splice two wires.

Click to expand...

whats the part # ?

OK, so all you that are running the MSD. Are you happy with it? Did it change your gas consumption? And would you recommend changing over?

Thanks,

Mike

Part # 8548. My 95 discovery has the crankshaft driven oil pump so I didn't have to change the drive gear.

I think if you've got an older engine they are distributor driven and you will have to drill a hole in the end of the msd distributor and put that drive thing on the end off the stock distributor.

Improved driveability big time. Fuel consumption improved a little, but my truck has a big leak on the vent line so its not the best one to measure. I can also buy delco distributor caps and rotors at any parts store in the country for half the price of a mail order only POS lucas cap and rotor.

two reasons I went w/ MSD over mallory.

First is the magnetic pickup on the MSD vs the optical pickup on the mallory.
Second is the GM distributor cap and rotor on the MSD vs mallory specific (I think)

t77911s said:

Robert, No I have not purchased the Mallory. I've heard from several people now that they have had "advance" problems. I'm really interested in the MSD. I've got the same engine as your 95 disco, so I guess the installation would be the same. Sorry about all of the following questions...
Could you please tell me what wires you had to splice?
Were you able to bypass all the land rover amp modues and stuff so it is just the dist. and coil?
How did you dial in your advance with the extra springs and bushings that come with it?
Any clearance problems?
Which MSD Coil did you use?

I assume you just plugged your vacum lines.

thanks,
tim

Click to expand...

Wiring- spliced in blue -> orange and red -> purple on the MSD distributor to the rover wiring harness. My disco has a remote mounted ignition module and I just cut the wires going to the stock distributor pickup and spliced in at that point. I've seen some RR with distributor mounted modules so you may have to do some extra wiring if thats the case.


I'm using the stock LR coil. You still need an "amp module", or ignition module as the non rover world calls it. It will work with the stock module, but mine crapped out a while ago and has been replaced with a gm HEI module. Functionally they are identical so if it works with one it will work with the other.


Advance- I'm running a small silver and blue spring right now with the black stop bushing and 6 degrees of base timing. Haven't tried two silvers yet(most mech. advance) because it runs really strong and no sign of pinging with the current setup, don't want to push it.

For the coil I will probably switch to a ford TFI coil in the near future off a 86ish to 95ish ford vehicle with a 5.0. Cheap and easy to find, much better than oil canister style coils. Right now the truck runs and its hot outside so I'll mess with this conversion later. This will require a somewhat custom plugwire/htlead since the coil is male and the cap I'm running is female. That brings me to another point. The MSD ships with a male terminal cap. Go get a distributor cap from a gm vehicle with a v8 and points and bolt it on (late 60-early 70 half ton pickup.) I think you can use your stock plug wires with that cap (I've been running Moroso custom wires for a while and didn't have any stock wires to test fit.) Mr Gasket even makes a see through clear distributor cap if you want to enter your truck in a car show with the hood propped open :bigok:

Clearance is as good as stock. No more burning your hand trying to get that rear clip back on the distributor cap.


There was only one vacuum line for the vac. advance, and yes, I just plugged it.

yes I think MSD is more reliable than Mallory, and I think the stock rover ignition module is more reliable than msd modules.

I've seen a few MSD 6al's crap out. From what I've seen they don't like vibration, and solid axle off road vehicles are a bad platform for them in my opinion.

In the future I plan on using a GM ECM to control the spark and lockout all mechanical advance in the distributor.

http://www.diy-efi.org/gmecm/papers/747spark.txt gives a rough idea of how its done on a carbed vehicle. If power enrich and cold start timing advance aren't required then all but an additional map sensor can be eliminated from his list of sensors.

take the black wire and ground it to the chassis. The blue and red are the ones you hook up to the orange and purple from the MSD.

don't know the part # for the HEI module, but go to a parts store and say its a 78 blazer with a 350.

I would keep the stock ignition module if yours works, there is no performance gain. The only reason mine broke was because of a leaky power steering resevoir that discoverys has right above the module.