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Followup To
Question -
I own a 99' chrysler cirrus 2.5L V6 and as you know these cars have a internal coil, the coil and distributor are one unit.Does the coil have a positive or negative wire?the reason that I am asking is that I been trying to hook up to my car a Msd ignition system i have the hole thing hooked up but except for a wire on the MSD box that needs to be hook up to the negative wire of my coil because something needs to trigger the MSD box the MSD techs cant help me cause they dont know much about these cars.Can you please help me with my problem Thank you.
Answer -
Hi Mike,
Yes the coil primary winding has a positive and negative pole in the classical sense. But I am not too familiar with the MSD ignition system and what it needs, having never installed one. If the box requires a 12V positive that is 'on' all the time and a grounding or "driver" wire that switches from 12v to ground every time the coil needs to put out a high voltage pulse on the secondary winding then there are wires on the two existing plug-ins to the distributor for this purpose. But my thinking is that the 2.5L is a modern engine and modern ignition system that will not be improved by the use of an MSD system. It may in fact already be one? I can tell you which wires on which plugs are the two that you need, but I am not sure whether it will work or work any better than the original design. On what basis do you believe that it will? I always thought the MSD systems were to improve a point-style distributor system.
In any case, the 12v wire for the ignition coil is the dark green/orange wire on the 2-pin plug in. And the "driver" wire for the ignition coil is the black/gray wire on the pin 6 or the 6-wire plug. There is also a true constant ground wire on that plug, the black wire on pin 5 but I suspect that is not what you are looking for. I really can't tell you how to re-route those wires to attach MSD to the coil in the distributor. I don't believe there is any practical way to substitute a different coil for the one already in the distributor because it is an integral design where the coil tower plugs directly into the distributor cap.
So my inclination would be to forget the idea of changing the ignition to MSD. Once you start cutting into the wires you will be opening the door to unreliable connections.
I would be interested in knowing why you believe this is an improvement. Best of luck.
Roland
Hey Roland
What I did was modified my distributor cap to recieve a external coil so know I have a performance coil that hooks up to the distributor cap, On the MSD there are a black and orange wire that needed to be connected to the cars coil with the modification I was able to connect those wires
now all i need was to connect two wires from the MSD one is red and the other is white the red has to be connected to a 12V switch,which i hooked up th my ignition swicth(key switch)the white wire has to connect to the negative of my coil to trigger the MSD box.Which one do you think would be best to connect the white wire to? The reason that I am connecting the ignition system is that they say this system is good when you are putting in performance parts in your car It provides a powerful spark that gives the car faster acceleration and always keeps the coil at full power even at high rpm.
Thanks roland for your fast response
AnswerHi Mike,
I would hook the white wire to the black/gray wire on pin 6 of the 6-pin plug of the distributor harness because that is the "trigger" for the regular coil also, and I would hook the red to the dark green/orange wire at pin 1 (or it may be labelled 11) the 2-wire plug because that way you will be safe against an engine fire should the engine falter in a crash situation then the 12v on the coil will be defeated by the autoshutdown relay which is the way it is designed now. Hooking the red to your ignition switch means that you have the potential for a spark when you don't need it or want it for safety purposes. You will need to keep the 6 pin plug attached to the distributor so I guess you will need to cut and splice the black/gray to make your connection to the MSD box (though before you cut it you might just want to tap into the black/gray with a needle probe to make sure this set is going to work, and if it doesn't then you haven't compromised that wire to the plug if you change your mind). You can of course disconnect the 2-pin plug from the distributor because it only has the single wire 12V supply that the MSD needs and which the distributor will not need if you are successful.
My wire colors are derived from the '96 Official Cirrus shop manual, as are the plug set-ups and pin assignments which I am assuming are identical in your '99. The colors are indeed how they are shown in the 95-00 Haynes manual I also have, but without showing the plugs and pin assignments, so I guess as long as you stick with the color codes things will work.
Roland
