Part 11: Ol' Sparky Retires - Ignition Upgrades

We ran the wires along the inner fender and up to the firewall. Thewires we weren't yet using (i.e., stage rpm limit input, timing retardinput, and engine cylinder selection--not used for eight-cylinderengines) were taped up and mounted under the box.

The supplied coil input wires have preterminated ends that plug into thecoil. The other ends plug into the orange and black wires from the box.The HI-6 box comes with weatherproof connections, which, if removed,voids the warrantee. Install the included weatherproof connector to thewires from the coil, and simply plug it in.

Before making connections or cutting wires, make sure you can route thewires out of the way, where they won't touch any hot engine parts oranything that may chafe or cut them. We ran ours along the edge of thefirewall and behind the wiper motor.

If you're using a tachometer, connect the tach's pulse-input wire to thegreen wire coming from the ignition box. Again, use the suppliedweatherproof connectors.

On to the distributor: We needed to install the optical sensor into thedistributor. The accessory kit for the optic comes with differentreluctor wheels and optic mounting brackets. Choose the ones that fityour application.

After the points and condenser were removed, the correct optic bracketwas mounted to the timing advance plate.

Next, we installed the appropriate reluctor and then slid the opticsensor onto the bracket and attached it with the supplied screws. We putthe wires from the optic through the hole in the distributor housingoriginally used for the points wire to the coil. The distributor wasthen completed--it was that easy.

The red and white wires from the optic were connected to the same colorwires from the CD box. Again, we used the weatherproof connectors. Thered wire was also connected to a switched, 12-volt source (the oldcoil's power-supply wire). We connected the black wire to a goodgrounding source.

To finish the job, a set of cut-to-fit Crane FireWires were installed.These wires feature only 25-ohm resistance per foot and a pure-siliconedouble-layer construction.