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.

Support this anecdotal comment with actual data!

Like what?

I was trying to be supportive of your comments regarding inductive ignition systems. Guess I erred in doing so.....

Yes, I know. I just asked that you provide additional info with regard to this statement;

Right on!

To the OP, counterfeit MSD units have been a problem for years and there are many other manufacturers that will not warranty anything sold by Amazon.

Did you buy it from MSD? NO. Was it a third party vendor using Amazon platform you bought it from? Let us know. Anyone can list products on Amazon.... Careful who you criticize and who you think owes you something....

Lets not have yet another thread get derailed by posts about whether or not this product can work. It has been proven multiple times (too many to count) that it works....

Cheers

Really? What about motorcycles? They pretty much all still use CDI.

OEMs don't use CDI on mainstream cars because inductive is cheaper. That is (literally to the accountants) the bottom line. Another factor is that modern engines run lean mixtures which suits the longer burn of inductive. 911s do not.

In high revving, rich mixture and high cylinder pressure applications, CDI is favoured.

If you look at racing, high revving or high cylinder pressure is usually the driver, but in some cases plug fouling is the reason, see below:

Spark-plug

"Besides its tiny size, another interesting feature of the F1 plug is that there's no protruding hook on the bottom. That's because simply there is no room for one. A normal ground J shaped electrode doesn't have a chance of surviving in an F1 motor, It would get crushed by the piston or simply shaken loose by the intense vibration. When an F1 piston is at the top of its stroke, it just about touches the cylinder head. The combustion-chamber volume is mostly made up of the recessed parts in the piston tops that are there to provide room for the valves. Without that hook, the ground electrode is simply the bottom edge of the threads. This design is known as a surface-gap spark plug. Surface-gap spark plug is a spark plug designed to produce sparks along the isolator surface at the ignition end. This spark plug type is also classified as semi-superficial discharge type and superficial discharge type. This spark plug has a smaller heat exposed isolator, therefore, it gets dirty easily. To overcome dirt, a capacitor discharge system is used which reaches rapidly the required voltage to produce the sparks. It is used in engines of high performance like the engines of Formula 1."

What motorcycles other than single/dual cylinder, or two cycle? My GSX1000R doesn't use CDI. It uses COP (coil on plug).

That's one factor. Another is than CDIs have higher failure rates.

You are aware that Porsche produced air cooled engines after the 911SC (CDI), that no longer used CDI, e.g. 911 3.2, 964, & 993, right?


It's of little relevance to relate the air cooled Porsche cylinder head design to a F1 head design to rationalize use of CDI over an inductive discharge ignition.

The article relates to plug fouling, high revving, rich mixture engines from the 90s. We have a few customers running those flat plugs. . Closer to our engines than a modern lean burn motor.

I love my BF hammer but it is not always the right tool for everything. Others might disagree. :)

My 2003 Kawasaki ZX-6RR race bike had a coil on plug setup. So did my pit mates 2002 Yamaha R1 race bike.

My ZX-6RR revved to 15,500 RPM and had a 13:1 compression ratio using a single plug per cylinder. Oh, the ZX-6RR was a homologation special so if CDI were important, it would have had it. This was almost 20 years ago......

Sure. But your hammer is your CDI setup and you seem think it is always the right tool for the job.

My race engine uses a CoP (inductive) setup and makes 102.5 HP per liter at the wheels. Let me say that again: At the wheels!

And then there are ignitions that do individual cylinder knock retard. Like mine.

Anyone here running it? Remember, when you adjust timing for "no knock" you are adjusting it to keep the worst cylinder quiet, robbing power from the rest. Yes, you can say my system doesn't make power but it allows you to safely extract more power from the engine.

Then there is the question of how are you determining there is no knock when you are setting it? By human ear alone? A good knock detection system is trying to detect knock that you CAN'T hear, while ignoring engine noise that you CAN hear.

Some tuners use knock headphones, some use a purpose built knock detector like the Phormula or the Gizmo K-Mon, but they are almost as much as my system and they do nothing but provide a warning if for some reason the engine starts knocking. Also, these systems are typically removed by the tuner after adjusting timing, leaving the engine at risk.

Sorry for going off topic, but modern aircooled engines have this feature, why not add it to the older ones. Because it doesn't say Bosch on the box?

No, I think CDI is the right tool for 911 rich mixture engines. Which is what Porsche thought too and they held on to it for 20 years...

mysocal911 'Dave', however, thinks inductive is superior in every application. I cannot agree with that.

I think the perfect ignition system is going to take the input of several designers with different approaches that reach a compromise that fits all criteria and engine builds, but in the end is mediocre for what it can't do. Wait, that is why we have more than one design out there! Jonny's design really needs a low inductance coil to work properly while mine(really Lloyd Winterburn's) needs a higher inductance coil to make the extra sparks. Those two CDI designs will never mesh. Timing adjustments can be tailored to either type which your designs could do. Make it CDI and you will have a winner. Fred

I am using a MoTec M130 system with knock sensors on each bank. My setup is able to detect knock on each cylinder and adjusts timing and/or fuel on a per cylinder basis.

Anyone have a guess what this is?



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http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1620600434.jpg
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just spitballing: dizzy with individual vacuum advance?

Scott:

Shirley and I showed our unit to MoTeC USA in 1992. We had it on our 1981 Ford EXP. I was running about 10° too much timing with 87 octane. I had a switch that made it easy to disable the system, built into the knock retard display. Flip it one way to activate and watch the LED'S show it's retarding individual cylinders, flip it the other way and listen to it knock.

With that combination of fuel and timing, it was easy to induce knock. With the system activated, it controlled beautifully.

We arrived about 7PM I think, and they gave us the grand tour of JGM Automotive Tooling. Then I gave the keys to the two principles and they took the car out while Shirley and I waited.

When they returned we all went to a conference room to talk. They wanted it very badly. We wanted to sell complete systems, as we do today, they wanted to buy the microcontroller with my secured code. They wanted MoTeC in Australia to design a new board to accept my chip. Shirley said "That's the heart of our system, and you wouldn't sell your heart, would you?"

They made a very generous offer, but Shirley was kicking me under the table not to accept, so I offered to make a small module with the chip and supporting hardware (crystal, etc), fully encapsulated in epoxy but with pins to plug into a socket. They insisted on the bare chip, so no deal was made.

I think MoTeC released their knock system in 2010. They had two versions. One is an external module, the other is internal. What I had proposed eighteen years earlier.

Designed at the World Headquarters of J&S Electronics. A spare bedroom in our condo.

I try to plug my stuff from time to time on different forums. I know I am often seen as an annoying guy hawking my wares, but I have invented a lot of cool ignition stuff. It's more "look what I did" than an actual sales pitch.

Shirley died recently from cancer. I found a video on her phone she made in 2016 and put it on youtube. It shows me testing an earlier version of the above system. I had to set the project aside the last three years while I cared for her:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0b3mFWPIqI

I suppose this is to suggest that MoTec could not have figured out how to do this properly sometime in the intervening 29 years....

With the MoTec M130, I can see the knock on a screen as it is happening while tuning. I can set the thresholds of when, what type (timing or fuel or both), and how much intervention is applied on a per cylinder basis. I can log these interventions so they can be tracked.

Not at all. It's just that I was first, and it took them a long time before they implemented it.

Yes, they have more bells and whistles. I'm one guy with practically zero resources except some intellect and a will to do it.

But one may ask a question, why do you have to intervene at all? That's the brute force approach.

I was inspired by the Bosch system when I read about it on the 944 turbo, in 1987. The system I released four years later was better than the '87 Bosch system.

No, but I see low voltage stuff too close to high voltage stuff. If that is fibre optic, then not such a problem, but perhaps you could elaborate? Guessing is not a game I enjoy. Fred

r