June 2006

This is the steps I used to replaced the distributor with the MSD ignition and Mallory distributor. I bought all of these parts from a fellow 914club member. The parts included the MSD igniton box (6AL), Mallory distributor, spark plug wires, Blaster 2 coil, tach adapter and 'hot' spark plugs.

This is the before shot of the engine compartment.

The first thing I did was remove the distributor. If you remove the single nut that holds the distributor in place, carefully pull the distributor out of it's hole. Don't move the engine until the new distributor is back in.

This shows the new Mallory distributor. It's a simple matter of aligning the slot in the bottom of the shaft and the pointer in the top in the same position as the distributor that was removed.

After replacing the distributor, it was a simple matter of replacing the coil and installing the new spark plugs. The new plugs are Bosch, W8CC, gapped at 0.045". They are gapped larger because of the hotter spark from the new coil. Also shown is the tach adapter installed on an aluminum plate.

The shows everything hooked up, but not bolted in.

This shows the firewall, before I mounted the MSD ignition box.

Here's a shot of the MSD box mounted to the firewall. I had to remove both seats, the center arem rest and the back pad. The box is mounted on (4) rubber bolts.

This shows everything hooked up, except the tach adapter. You'll notice a small black cap, with a screw through it, on the top of the MSD box. When you first receive this, you'll need to remove the black cap and cut the (2) wires. This will 'convert' the box to a 4-cylinder ignition system. If left intack, it would be an 8-cylinder system.

This is the final installation. Unforturnately, this installation took me over (4) weeks to complete. The MSD ignition/distributor was very simple and straight forward. Once I swapped it all out, the car started immediately and ran great, but the tack didn't work. I did a lot of research and I was finally able to determine that the orignal tach adapter I received was the wrong one, the correct one is the 8920. Once I wired it up correctly, everything worked perfectly.

This shows how the wires were finally hooked up. This is probably the best upgrade to do to these 'older' engines. This will eliminate the points and the issues with keeping the gaps correct. Also, the car seems to run more smoothly and it's suppose to get better gas mileage.

Here's the MSD tach adapter wiring diagram. The final step is to check the timing of the distributor. It should be set at 30 degress at 3500 rpm. Remember, there will be NO dwell angle to set.