MSD coil pack issues?

Ok, so right now my legacy's dead in the garage, and will be till at least sunday. It all started yesterday when I installed a new MSD blaster coil pack. I went through everything very thoroughly and did the install the right way; at first the engine backfired on the original orientation, so I flipped the coil pack 180 degrees and didn't encounter any other problems. For wiring, I picked up a 99 neon coil pack clip with pigtails, and wired: red to red, yellow to gray with yellow stripe, and blue to black with blue stripe. Everything ran fine; I reset the ecu, started it up, and drove it half an hour without any issues. It sounded great, and I was so excited about the new mod until last night.

 

My brother took the car skiing with a buddy, and he drove 45 minutes to the mountain without any issues. But when he went to go drive home, it wouldn't start. It would crank, but then would hesistate and backfire and never catch. What's more, the battery drained out very quickly, and he had to get a jump to keep on trying to start it. Still nothing...so I had to go out and try to fix it. Couldn't get that working, so we threw in the towel and called AAA to get it towed to the house.

 

So now today: she's sitting in the garage with a dead battery and some weird starting issue. There doesn't seem to be a tie to starting the car and the battery being dead; even running off of another car, it still wouldn't start. Switching around the orientation of the coil pack didn't change anything either. It seems to have fuel, and I doubt the coil pack is bad because everything was running earlier...any opinions? I'm stumped, because it could be a number of things. If anyone has done the MSD swap before, can you tell me which wires go to which too? I'm bummed that things didn't work out, and I'm already out $100 for a tow...it's so damn frustrating.

Double check the connections. Make sure they are still attached. The battery won't drain due to the MSD ignition I wouldn't think.

 

Check the fuse box for anything blow. Also check for the "Fusible Link" its like a wire. Check to see if that's blown or not. Your alternator might have gone out.

 

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b248/winston856/IMG_0636.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b248/winston856/IMG_0630.jpg

Is that your MSD baddog? I'm confused, I thought it was a simple splicing in of wires; I don't have that grey clip or anything like that, like the fusible links or anything. I directly attached the wires according to color and went from there. Did I miss something?

Those pictures are of the guide I followed. I have had no issues. The grey clip should be from your stock wiring. And I don't mean the part the plugged into the stock coil pack.

 

Fusible link is in your fuse box under the hood. You may or may not have one.

I don't understand why I would reuse the old clip and hook it up to the new splicing of wires. Unless it's just used as a guid to show which color wire goes to which?

 

Ok, fusible link is something to check out. I'll do it sunday when I have some time. But I'm still stumped, I'm afraid of what I might've fried/changed if I wasn't suppose to just splice in the wires

This is hard to explain for some reason for me. lol

 

Do you have the gray clip? I am not talking about the one that was on the coil pack (because there wasn't one)

 

Better yet. Get me a picture of your setup.

 

 

That's how the set up looks. I originally soldered the wires together and put shrink-wrap over it, but decided to cut it out because of the incident. Now the wires are just wrapped around each other. Nothing else has been done, and you can see the orientation of the coil pack. Does yours look similar?

 

Sorry about the crap cell phone pictures too, my camera's still broken

Update: I soldered up wires to the old coil pack, and tried getting a good contact with the original igition wires, and viola! Started up just fine last night. I left the battery in my charger to get a fully cycle, and hopefully that's not dead this morning. But the old coil pack working rules out anything with bad timing or something more serious. I'm rewiring the system today to try and get the MSD working; I found a couple good write-ups that say to just match it wire for wire, so I'll try that route.

What EJ22 do you have? Or is that the connections for the 2.5?

 

If I had the car with me I would go outside and take a picture. Maybe I can get the girl to send me a picture. Thankfully she knows what I have done to the car and what I am talking about.

It's a 97, so phase 2, but I did end up getting it working. I don't know what ended up happening, but we rewired it according to a different diagram found online. 12v down the middle, grounds on the sides, not according to color. Runs like a top now, why did it work wired a different way though? The 12v was in a different spot, and it still ran great for the first couple times! Not sure what the case was unforunately :/

post that wiring diagram

Just a side note. I have done this modification on other vehicles. Had added an aftermarket coil to 2.4L Turbo in a Dodge. Had problems with the setup. Correct wiring. Wire resistance correct. But secondary reistance testing was ALSO within allowable limits. Ended up wiping out the coil driver in the ECU. Seems like occasionally ignition parts have conflict with the allowable dwell, and tach limits preset in the computer--versus the new upgraded coil's abilities. Just a thought.....

Subaru wiring:

 

----------->

cyl 3&4, -

----------->

12V, + CLIP INTO COILPACK >>

----------->

cyl 1&2, -

----------->

 

Orientation from top to bottom, looking at coil pack with clip out to the passenger side. I'll see if I can't find a pdf with a picture.

 

Hippo, I'm glad I didn't wipe out the coil driver on the ECU. At first I thought that a fuse had blown because I hooked up the wrong wires in the wrong places, because there wasn't any spark/it was backfiring, but that wasn't the case. it was just me being stupid and following what two others had said about the color-coding, when I should've found all the other DIYs saying how it's supposed to be hooked up wire-for-wire.

I understand the butt connectors for quick testing, but hopefully once you got it figured out they went away. It's not a great connection for something like that.

I just did this mod to mine.

http://legacygt.com/forums/showthread.php/msd-coil-into-subaru-step-step-photos-152338.html

is it possible to bolt the msd coil with the plug facing left? then just swap the outside of the 3 wires to flip the ignition around again? my fuel lines are in the way if i run the plug to the right.

I am sure you could if you make sure your firing order stays correct

well it started. it ran. not to bad but was not right. so i finished putting everything back together and solderd the connection and went to start it again and it sound like it running on one or two cylinders. im gonna go flip it around to the correct way. like how you guys have done it.

problem solved, the car was heaily flooded with bad spark plugs. *love flood clear mode*