MSD Digital 6AL died

[TheJDMan]

I installed a brand new MSD Digital 6AL in "Dust Off" about a month ago. It was one of the last items I installed before it was ready to drive. I put about 100 miles on the car and Tues I drove it to the store and shut if off like normal. When I came out to leave the engine would crank but would not fire. Ultimately paid $80 to have it loaded on a roll back and delivered back home. I expected to find a dead coil since I was reusing my old drag racing coil which is 30 years old. But after testing the entire ignition system I determined that the 6AL had died. Summit sent me a replacement 6AL which I installed today and the engine fired up without hesitation. But now I'm not sure I trust the box to work. Both the tech guy at MSD and the tech guy at Summit said that this was the first Digital 6AL that they knew of that had died. The one thing I did notice on the old box was that the LED did not light as the instructions indicated it should. I also noticed that the ignition seemed to get erratic at rpms over about 4000 which I thought was odd. All that is gone with the new box so I suspect the first box was bad from the get go. Hopefully this new box will last longer than 100 miles.

[ErikSOCAL]

just curious where it was installed? I have heard the digital 6's don't do too well in the engine compartment. Ran one that was mounted in the passengar cabin and seemed to do well.

[TheJDMan]

MSD says it is fine to mount the box in the engine compartment provided it is not in direct contact with the engine. I have my box mounted on the firewall. The second box has been working just fine. I suspect the first one was simply defective.

[brian72Olds]

I had a similar problem with my MSD box ,engine would run ok then die on me , I determined that the white wire that isn't used was not wrapped tightly enough and was shorting out the box going over bumps and ripples in the road .Wrapped it up tighter with electric tape and made sure it was not touching any part of the box and has been fine ever since.

[Motorcitydak]

i had a 6A box die on me a few years ago after about 3 years of use. It would randomly just stop working for a few sparks and make the truck jerk like crazy so I would hit the clutch, hit the gas and hope that is worked again. That was fun as I was pulling a boat out of the water hoping my engine wouldn't quit. I did not know what the problem was at first. One day I just bypassed the box, went back to factory wiring with the wire coming from the distributor to the coil instead of the MSD box. It is simple to do and the engine will just run like stock, no more MSD