Holley/MSD multiple scam not sparks
 

Note this is cross posted on 914World.

I bought a MSD Digital 6AL ignition box for my 911. The car had a Permatune unit when I bought it and that proved unreliable. Rather than spending the money on a Bosch unit I liked the idea that you can buy an MSD in almost any place in the country and the Digital model has a plug in harness now. I had been running a 6AL, but I thought the new rebuild would start with the digital model. Well it took me a couple of months to get ready but last week I turned the key.

Nope. No spark. Changed coil. No spark. I found that the white wire for points worked just fine, but the purple and green ones for magnetic pickup gave an occasional tiny spark. The old bow worked just fine.

I just got off the phone with MSD. They will not honor any warranty for the box. Why? Because I ordered it from Amazon.

I bought the thing in late November of 2020, and mail ordered near everything instead of going shopping. I figured that staying home was helping to limit my chances of killing some poor child or mother by spreading coronavirus. It turns out that MSD/Holley has a beef with Amazon over counterfeit mother boards. I asked the rep how I was supposed to know that they would stand behind their brand if bought from Auto Zone but not from Amazon. He stayed perfectly silent in reply. Not the man's fault, but it is hiss bosses fault. Do I blame Amazon for taking the low road. Certainly. Do I blame Holley for not warning customers. 6ell yes!! NOTE: he told me that they have had returns with counterfeit motherboards: he DID NOT say that they would honor the company guarantee if the part turned out to be genuine. Nope even if the product could be proven to be made by them with a recent serial number.

So there you have it. Blame me for not going with the old school OEM. $300 bucks gone south, or whatever direction it flies.

What does Amazon say?

Amazon is sending me a return label. I can understand Holley wanting Amazon to feel the pain on this, but they don't know that I have a counterfeit or they didn't want to deal with the maybe. One company is willing to spend money on its reputation. And one isn't. One had customer support for a problem (logging in from India) and one doesn't want to bother.

I don’t think MSD is doing anything wrong here. There is a vendor selling counterfeit product so they want you to deal with that vendor. Why should MSD have to spend time and money dealing with this when you can just return it to Amazon and buy from a reliable source.

Amazon had a return window that expired, and they still backed the sale. My problem with MSD is how they support their customer. I am buying an MSD product. If it had worked they would not only get the profit from the sale, but also my word of mouth praise - which is important in this albeit large niche hotrod market. The rep did NOT tell me they do not sell through Amazon because they supply Amazon vendors with product, so make money from the sales. He did not tell me to go through Amazon for satisfaction - just a long wait on hold and nada.
Here is the problem. I was completely satisfied by an employee located on the opposite side of the planet and hung out to dry by an American voice.

The situation certainly sucks.

I can't fault a company for not honoring a warranty for a counterfeit product.

Regarding Amazon, their customer service is the best in my experience. If an item is shipped and sold by Amazon, or sold by a third-party and fulfilled by Amazon you can buy with confidence.

You do need to be aware of when an item is shipped and sold by a third party. Having a marketplace makes Amazon extremely useful, but the third-party will often have very different policies.

I'm curious; was the MSD product shipped and sold from Amazon or a third-party?

So you are saying that a big corporation piling high and selling cheap doesn't care much about their customers? Who knew?

If anyone were to have a problem with any of our products, they get first rate support - even if they are 3000 miles away.

Your beef is with Amazon. Consider it a lesson learned. Sure, they honored your return but still wasted your time and money chasing it down. I only buy throwaway and consumable stuff there, if they have the best pricing, no chance of being counterfeit without my knowledge.

When I buy something that I really care about being authentic (most parts for my Porsche fall into that category), I buy them from a vendor I know/trust. I buy lots of stuff on Amazon. An MSD wouldn’t be one of them.

Amazon sells counterfeit O2 sensors too. If I we're to buy an O2 sensor from Amazon I would not expect Bosch to help unless Bosch was the Amazon vendor.

It has a serial number !

From your 914 thread ...
914World.com - The largest online 914 community!
https://bangshift.com/general-news/sponsor/counterfeit-product-alert-how-to-identify-a-real-msd-6al-ignition-vs-a-fake/

https://bangshift.com/wp-content/upl...4.03.13-PM.png

Are we sure it's counterfeit? My Honda friends used to go thru those 6al boxes like one a year. They just werent a quality electronic item. They may still not be.

Not trying to pile on, but years ago, there was a comparison between the PC (printed circuit) boards contained inside their aluminum cases. The MSD 6AL PC board was peppered with wire jumpers soldered to various points on the PC. I assume the board would be eventually corrected in the next production run, but for those particular units may not enjoy long or consistent life.

A competing product was also examined, that same showed no wired jumpers.

Not definitive, but here's one competitor's POV comparing their product with Crane and MSD units.
Review the technology in the Daytona, Crane and MSD Capacitive Discharge Ignition systems and decide for yourself why the CD1 from Daytona is superior to all others

The MSD 6AL box is popular (a real one). Thus, many recommendations. YMMV.

S

Thanks for the link. Near the end of the article it says thanks to designer Chris (RIP). He designed both the Crane then the Daytona units.

He was murdered by his son a few years ago, who later shot himself.

https://www.ocala.com/news/20150707/ormond-murder-suspect-found-dead-of-self-inflicted-gunshot-wound

Sad.

I almost bought one of the 6AL's for my 930. So glad I didn't go that way.

Back when I worked for Lucent Microelectronics, we made integrated circuits. One of our layout guys would put a little symbol in an unused space on chips which was a skier going downhill. No one cared and it was cute.

Then we caught wind of fake ICs. At that time our ICs were fabricated in a foreign country which I will not name. We got a few and decapped them. The chips were identical to our layout including the little skier guy. They had taken our masks and made their own chips.

Thanks for that link, good stuff. I wonder if you could run 2 coils off that Daytona CD-1 box ...

I’ve had a 6AL box on my 3.2 for close to 10 years now, I bought it used so I have no idea how old it is. Zero issues.

Your comment doesn't fit the story. If China counterfeiters decided to copy your product and sell it all over the world for a discount.
And thousands of people want you to warranty a product you didn't make. No way you're going to fix or refund them.


We'll I looked at every available option, including Johnny H's product. MSD is the only way I found to run a modern programable timing curve with boost retard on CIS.
I've been running it for two years and over 10,000 miles with no issues. You may be surprised at how much drivability can be improved with a good timing curve.


To the OP. Why not order from Summit Racing? Free shipping from them too.
Was the unit you purchased half price?

That's less of an important factor compared to the use of electrolytic capacitors in a very high temperature environment, which all the mentioned CDIs do.

It appears that the key product goal for all of the above is to stuff as many components as possible in their boxes.
Remember, the greater the number of components of a system, the greater is the failure rate.
Present day OEM automotive inductive discharge ignitions just require one component,
a IGFET, controlled by the mcu of engine ECU, to drive the ignition coil.

Bottom Line: The use of archaic CDI technology for OEM automotive ignition in the 21th century is non-existence.

Careful there, Dave. Some here will tell you that CDI is the ONLY way to go for an air-cooled 911. I used to think that too but discovered that modern inductive ignition systems work fantastically well, even on a high output race engine, assuming your pick the right components for the specific job.