AMC Eagle

[Eric H]

As long as it's accurate at Zero you're fine.

[MIPS]

Oh here was an interesting failure.
I took a pothole on the highway and the engine went totally dead. Couldn't restart it. I had to call to get some tools brought in and found out I lost my TACH. After a bit of investigating I determined while still on the side of the highway that it vanished after leaving the ignition module.



If you don't know what this is, these are great. I might of mentioned it before.
So points-type ignitions suck and require a TON of maintenance and I'm sure anyone old enough to know points will tell you how much it sucked. the Duraspark system however replaces points with a hall effect pickup in the distributor and electronic amplification system that generates the TACH instead. It's all solid state and requires no maintenance.
Anyways, you can potentially forget it's in there from how little you will need to touch it and mine has been in there so long the connectors have become brittle. One such socket had split repeatedly and the electrical connections had pulled themselves out through the back of the connector.



Note the green wire in that harness. That's TACH. The bump must of slipped it out and that was my issue, so a ziptie and pushing the pins back into the plug and I was off and running again.

Okay, so if the module has bunk connectors, why not just replace the module?
So, Duraspark and Duraspark II came in a number of variants for different types of vehicles. They were normally identified by the number of connectors they had, plus the color of the grommet. An AMC Eagle uses a module with three connectors (distributor pickup, harness wiring and computer electronic retard) and a yellow grommet. Most people sell a version with only two connectors and a blue grommet. Even other eagles I've salvaged from did not have their original module because if you do the Nutter Bypass you don't need the OEM unit, therefore a blue grommet version was cheap and easy to get.
While you can get replacement plugs on the harness side, the sockets on the module side seemingly are not sold separately, so I'm waiting for a chance to get a beat module with good sockets I can steal and splice those on. No point replacing a module that isn't defective.

[MadMan]

lol most old mechanics piss and moan about electronic ignition in much the same way as they do about LeanBurn and anything else computery. I guess they'd rather clean their points every 100 miles. MUCH easier.

https://www.rockauto.com/en/catalog/...ule+(icm),7172
Here you go, yellow grommet on the 6H1016. Likely both are the same. Interestingly it's only for 1982. I wonder if they only did the electronic carb in 82 or something. Or rockauto's listings could be wrong, wouldn't be the first time.

Also I love the AMC sticker on the Motorcraft-branded box lol. Nothing to see here, folks!

[Eric H]

Old Mechanic here, Points usually didn't abruptly leave you stranded miles from anywhere, Electronic Ignition did that twice to me. One was a GM HEI that I had retrofitted into my 68 Nova 6 cyl, the other was an 87 Toyota Pickup, died on the 10 Freeway in heavy traffic while passing.
I used to see a lot of those Ford modules fail back in the 80's, the 90's distributor mounted modules also had a horribly high failure rate. I wouldn't go anywhere with an early Electronic system unless I had a spare module and the tools to change it.

Newer systems are much more robust and redundant, one driver per coil on the newest systems with individual coils, of course the Crank Sensor could fail, but that seems to be a very rare event.

[mr_rye89]

I didn't know AMC used Duraspark. Just Everyone Else's Parts lol.

I killed the ignition module on my '79 Toyota, Good luck finding another one for sane money. It got replaced with an MSD Streetfire box, which works great for about 5000 miles before it won't let you rev past 1500. Replaced that with the Autozone $20 HEI module mounted on a heatsink AWAY from the engine. Still worked when I sold it.

I also had the Briggs Twin I/C in my lawn tractor running an HEI module. Using an ABS sensor off a Ford pumpkin, HEI module, GM dual tower coil pulled from a W body. Works good but disables all the safety switches.

[MadMan]

Originally Posted by Eric H

Old Mechanic here, Points usually didn't abruptly leave you stranded miles from anywhere, Electronic Ignition did that twice to me. One was a GM HEI that I had retrofitted into my 68 Nova 6 cyl, the other was an 87 Toyota Pickup, died on the 10 Freeway in heavy traffic while passing.
I used to see a lot of those Ford modules fail back in the 80's, the 90's distributor mounted modules also had a horribly high failure rate. I wouldn't go anywhere with an early Electronic system unless I had a spare module and the tools to change it.

Newer systems are much more robust and redundant, one driver per coil on the newest systems with individual coils, of course the Crank Sensor could fail, but that seems to be a very rare event.

I love how you swooped in an proved my point. Another reason newer systems are more robust is simply down to delicate electronics being very old technology now. It's very well-understood and failure points have been learned by now. Manufacturing defects have been ironed out. High quality parts are widely available and cheap now. Etc, etc.

[MIPS]

It's still neat to hear from the other side. I already knew that equivalent systems are still not permitted in most aircraft due to the fact that points will gradually fail while an electronic ignition will instantly fail. Personally myself I've yet to seen one fail (mind you, I'm currently using my only one) so sometimes experience counts.

[beat_truck]

Originally Posted by Eric H

Old Mechanic here, Points usually didn't abruptly leave you stranded miles from anywhere, Electronic Ignition did that twice to me. One was a GM HEI that I had retrofitted into my 68 Nova 6 cyl, the other was an 87 Toyota Pickup, died on the 10 Freeway in heavy traffic while passing.
I used to see a lot of those Ford modules fail back in the 80's, the 90's distributor mounted modules also had a horribly high failure rate. I wouldn't go anywhere with an early Electronic system unless I had a spare module and the tools to change it.

Newer systems are much more robust and redundant, one driver per coil on the newest systems with individual coils, of course the Crank Sensor could fail, but that seems to be a very rare event.

My last Ford, an '88 4 banger Mustang, left me stranded when the TFI module on the distributor took a dump. Between that, rust, and several other problems it had, I sent it to the boneyard.

I think the ignition module was on it's last legs in my '91 Ranger when it went to the boneyard due to rust. It was one that was a 4 banger but had 8 spark plugs. Sometimes the tach would start reading half the RPMs it was actually turning. I never checked, but I suspect half of the plugs quit firing at the same time. Shutting the ignition off and turning it back on always caused it to go back to normal.

The only other ignition failure I've had was a coil pack on a POS VW Jetta. That whole car was one giant failure, though.

I would never even consider trading modern electronic ignition for points, though.

[MadMan]

I had a neighbor who told me a story. He had an old Ford Bronco, not sure how old, he made it seem like the 80s, but probably the 70s, hard to say. He no longer had it when I heard the story. He used to drive 200 miles to work and back every day. He had to stop halfway (both there and back) and clean the points!

I'm sure it's an extreme example, but I would take one or two failures (needing a tow truck) over cleaning my points twice a day, I'll tell you that much.

[MIPS]

Okay well now that I've played with the timing a bit it's apparent that the Eagle isn't liking the diet of 86 and both sea level and high altitude (above 3000 feet) driving. You can tune for above or below and 90% of the time it will be behaved but the variance in air density means somewhere along the line you're gonna get some wicked knock.
This is fixed starting in 1984 with a redesigned (okay, internally it's the same microcontroller) computer that includes a knock sensor, but I'm an 82, so no knock sensor. Of course, there's a fix for that.



They don't normally come up for sale often but it's great for adding a knock sensor to a non-equipped engine and it supports almost every ignition type. Popular Science positively reviewed it in 1984 and yesterday found one for the equivalent of "half price" in 80's dollars...but it's going to a PO box int he states so it's unlikely I'll be able to install it for a while.

[MadMan]

You could probably make one with an ordinary knock sensor and a Raspberry Pi. Old Chevy knock sensors are tapered pipe thread that fit in the block's coolant drain.

[dishdude]

This sucker is clean.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1988-Americ...gAAOSwqmJfVQ4T

[MIPS]

Ran into a small fire. Nothing too serious.

For those who have grown up with cars where the headlamps are contolled by a relay, in the days before that was a thing you had both battery voltage and the full draw of the headlights coming right up to the dash and getting routed by a switch. Doing it this way did work but put a lot more stress on what was otherwise a combination switch. It's a common issue for the switch or the connector or in some cases even the harness to burn up from age related wear.

In my case it appears my switch has been replaced previously, however the housing later cracked and the main headlight output terminal came loose. The resulting resistance burned the wire and spade clean through the connector.
Note the two marks where the spade was just sitting loosely on top of the terminal.



So better now when it's getting colder and there's less daylight to pull the cluster and replace the headlight control and dimmer switches. Thankfully my local parts shop supplies both.

[MadMan]

You know they sell the plug, too, right?

[MIPS]

Yes but I needed the car tonight and the plug would of not come in to my supplier until Tuesday. I just snipped the old crimp off, crimped and soldered in a new one and now it's all good.