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.

So, dont think the problem is so much MSD as it is Amazon. I have a buddy whos business now relies heavily on Amazon (because thats just how the world works now) and I get to hear all his horror stories as a vendor on a regular basis.

As a customer Amazon is usually pretty great because you can pretty much return anything no questions asked as long as you are in the return window, your issue here though is that you waited so long to use your product (though you may still want to see if you can get a return through the vendor on Amazon) I totally feel for you as I did the same thing with an ignition coil i purchased for a project and didnt use for a year (and it turned out to be Chinese knock off garbage)

Back to the vendor issue though, Amazon allows pretty much anyone to supply product for a listing so unless you are paying attention to who the shipping vendor is when you purchase you may or may not be getting what you expect and in many cases what you wind up getting is counterfeit garbage from China. In one case I had purchased a memory foam mattress for my daughter, liked it so much that I wound up re-buying a second one from the exact same listing for my guest room, 2nd one i received was obviously different packaging/vendor from the first and complete garbage, despite being purchased from the exact same listing. My buddies company actually paid Amazon to get a listing for a unique product he offered. This listing was later hijacked by another vendor by way of how things work on Amazon and he then wound up getting support calls or issues for product being shipped by this other vendor.

Bottom line, Amazon can be absolutely hell to deal with as a Vendor and if you buy from Amazon you need to expect to deal with all return issue though Amazon.

I know this doesn't help but pretty well every 6AL on ebay and amazon is counterfeit.
The 6AL has been counterfeited for years, that's why MSD stopped making them, it's a huge problem for MSD. For quite a while now MSD will only honour the warranty from authorized dealers.

This link is from 2013, the issue proceeds this date.

https://bangshift.com/general-news/sponsor/...tion-vs-a-fake/

They replaced it with the 6al digital which sucks so I've been told. To get a real 6AL from MSD you have to use the MSD 6TN/6ALN NASCAR CD Ignitions 6430, is basically a 6AL with a clear base plate and 2.5-3X the money.

For a real good CDI check out M&W Ignitions.

See if your credit card company will help.

red wire to battery ?
been through this with several , 911s ..had to run pos wire diretly to Bat....its easy in a 914 ..but lately ..ran great was ..red wire to battery..fix..And no not starter pos...Battery...Ran good when installed then had probllems..

I went through a lot of misery with my MSD boxes when I put my car back together.

Could not get the car to start/spark. (I have a twin plug flat 6 with dual boxes.)

Similar to the post above, it is best/preferable to wire the heavier red lead from the box directly to the battery.

In my case, my battery is relocated to the front trunk and it was more practical to wire to the starter lead (with the main battery positive lead).

I used the MSD Youtube video and bought an inexpensive high voltage tester from Advance Auto to troubleshoot my issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeEzDrKYBM0

https://shop.advanceautoparts.com/p/perform...mp;gclsrc=aw.ds

Using the procedure in the video, under static load my system appeared to be OK (using the magnetic trigger jumpered with a paper clip).

My issue turned out to be a low voltage (to the MSD units) when the starter was engaged causing no high voltage spark.

Took my leads off the starter terminal and cleaned them all up/sanded them clean.

Re-assembled the leads to the starter and the car fired straight up.

Thanks everyone.
The wiring is correct. An older box works fine, and the new box works with the points trigger, but my 911 has a magnetic trigger.

Amazon will refund. A man probably in India was very helpful. The American guy at MSD figured their issue with counterfeiting was really my problem.

I feel for MSD. It must suck. I was really surprised that they are doing nothing for their customers. The warrantee statement disallows units bought on internet auction sites. For all of its drawbacks Amazon aint ebay, and certainly wasn’t mentioned . MSDHolley is not doing anything to define authorized sellers, nor to publicize such a thing.

In my professional life i would order biochemical solutions worth several hundred bucks for only fifty microliters. If we got what we thought was a bad batch the vendors would send a new one overnight for free with just a phone call and no return. I don’t expect that sort of thing in the real world but i really expected better from a legend such as Holley. But then, maybe not. They don’t seem to want to tell the world, so here I am.

Not impressed with MSD tech support. I was missing a connector for the coil and MSD “tech support” said “sorry we’re under staffed and really can’t help, you’ll just have to put some other terminals on it “

I researched these units when setting up my system,ended up going to factory system based on 1975 911 Permatune 3 pin after talking to Bob Ashlock,what I did find was the amount of faulty units F/S on ebay ...just saying.

I have the stock 3.0 distributor with mag trigger. I had to cut and split the wires in the pigtail from the distributor to plug into my 6AL.

Mine is older though.

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Stinkin rotten fakeries,
as made in some offshore scamming factory, paying pennies for labour.

narp, nix, not.
nuts.

I think there are big issues with the digital ones and was happy to find a NOS one from Brad Mayer that is likely 20 years old but new in the box. So far so good.

I've been running the original MSD 6AL since 2008 with my 3.0 mag dizzy. I get a misfire every once in a while at idle, I was wondering if I need a new box. It doesn't feel like a carb misfire because there is no popping. Can't find any vacuum leaks either. Any one else have an issue like that from an old box? Or should I look else where, maybe wires?