1965 Dodge Monaco (C-body), 413, 727, pretty much
stock. It’ll be a street car, no racing.
Just bought it, fellow who had it before
me didn’t do anything with the electrics,
and I’m working on debugging and
upgrading.
What’s the real issue with Chrysler discontinuing
the 3690428 electronic ignition
kit? They must have sold millions of these
kits over the years—it was probably their
best seller! I see a lot of vendors advertising
kits “just like the Chrysler kit,” but I want to
make sure I’m not buying some Chinese
junk. (I wired up my 383 car with a MP kit,
3690732 V.R., and Accel Super Coil years
ago, and it’s worked perfectly for almost
20 years now). Is the MP kit coming back?
What would you recommend as alternative?
Also, if I upgrade the alternator, how
much output should I look for? How many
amps can my 50 year old wiring harness
take before it goes Chernobyl on me?
Chrysler stopped making distributors
when the Indianapolis Electrical Plant
(Shadeland Ave.) closed in the 1980s.
MP then had to scramble for a distributor
supplier; they insisted that the new
vendor use the original casting to maintain
the OEM appearance. They settled
on Accel/Mallory who miniaturized their
HEI (GM) advance mechanism to fit the
smaller Chrysler housing. The first few
years of these were an absolute disaster,
although the advance curve (mechanical)
was easy enough to rework, they came
with a ridiculous curve preinstalled. I
won’t belabor this point since I have covered
this repeatedly. Suffice to say that
your average Joe installer experienced
some combination of stalling at idle or
extreme detonation.
Some years later, I was able to get
them (MP) to ship them with a more
appropriate curve and offer the tuning
(re-curve) kit with a MP part number. This
helped, but the shrunken HEI guts used
very lightweight internals (not everything
scales down well) which resulted
in jumpy, unstable timing at any rpm
less than a few hundred above the maxadvance
engine speed. Basically, this
distributor never worked properly on the
street. Never.
I’m not sure why MP threw in the towel,
Accel is still manufacturing distributors,
but it is for the best, no tears here.
Most (if not all) of the kits available
today use a Chinese distributor, but it is
really a much better unit, ball bearings,
etc. Good kits can be had from Summit,
FireCore, and Jegs. I would, however,
avoid the “all in one” designs for several
reasons. Use a standard Chrysler-style
ECU and ballast.
If you want the original Chrysler distributor,
simply buy a reman (for ’72-’73)
from vendors such as rockauto.com, and
source the harness and ECU from wherever
you prefer.
On the alternator, 65A is absolute max.
I’d not go that high unless you really need
it for some reason. Beyond that, I see wiring
upgrades and an