LS1 Coils and eDist

 

Ever since I heard Nolan installed one, I wanted to do a conversion.  Nolan and Tony were a lot of help.  The conversion isn't cheap.  My goal was to be able to spray a bunch of alcohol without breaking up.  Mark Larson's pump gas, alcohol injected truck was also an inspiration.

Parts used:

Here are some pictures:

I used the stock ignition module.  I bent a piece of aluminum strap to mount it on.  The aluminum also serves as a heat sink.  I used some heat sink compound also.

I mounted the ignition module on the firewall.  It's kind of hard to see in this picture.  I think the module could be mounted with the engine in, but I had mine out anyway.  It's easiest if you mount it within reach of the distributor harness, so you don't have to extend wires.  I have several thousand miles on it now, without any known issues.

I bought the coil packs from a salvage yard.  I believe they came off a 2000 Corvette.  They came with a bracket and wiring.  I modified the wiring harness for 3 coils on each side instead of 4.

I had everything bolted together on the engine stand to check for clearance for mounting the coils.

I bought some 1/4" thread couplers and brazed them onto the valve covers to mount the coils.  It took some time locating them to provide clearance for everything.  I also use a couple of pieces of strap brazed to the side of the valve cover to support the coils as needed.

Here's a picture of the other side with coils bolted in place.  They fit under the stock intercooler fine.

I used a Mallory crank trigger.  I used some long studs to mount it to the block through the lower 2 accessory brackets.  The crank trigger wires go to the pickup coil terminals on the ignition module.  The truck will run and idle fine, if you have the wires reversed, but won't run well at higher rpm.  That ended up causing me lots of problems....I basically rewired everything, and was starting to replace parts...even thought the eDist was bad for awhile.

The bolt holes in the crank trigger wheel have to be re-drilled, or you won't get the signal at the right time.  I ended up drilling a couple of extra sets of holes due to some miscalculations.  lol

Here's a picture of the MSD cam sync plug.  It takes up a lot less room than a Vortec distributor.  I tried them both.  It comes with an adjustable collar.   For some reason, the electrical output is more of a sine wave than a square wave, but still work okay.

Here's a picture of the Fluidampr installed.  I had the snout of the balancer machined off to make up for the thickness of the crank trigger.  The machine shop also took a little off the crank trigger.

Now for the wiring:

 

The above is from the service manual, with some of my notes.

 

MSD faxed me this info on their cam sync plug.  Notice they also sell a pickup and magnet.  That could be used with a stock distributor with a little engineering.  If you want to save money you could modify the stock distributor, and wouldn't need the Mallory crank trigger or the cam sync plug or the custom mount for the module.

Here's the eDist schematic with my notes.

 

Here's more eDist stuff.  I highlighted the terminals we need to use.  If you do away with the stock coil, you lose your tach signal, so don't forget to wire up the eDist tach.  BTDT.

I called FAST for some tech support.  They weren't very helpful, but they were polite.  They basically told me it wouldn't work, unless I bought their computer.

It's been up and running for quite awhile as a daily driver without problems.  I haven't got to spray a lot of alcohol yet.  I had a Hobbs switch fail at the Nats, so didn't have any alcohol injection there.  Brian Dourty raced it for me, and still managed a 12.3x at 111mph, around 20 psi, and intake temps over 200 degrees.