I never thought that! I am thankfull for your help. I wanted to swap systems but I had more trouble than the norm.

thanks! a thought on the amp gauge. you said at some point that you light red and your gauge were on the same line. is it possible to move either of them to a different switched on circuit? i would go and look at mine but it's all apart right now and i can't remember what i used for my switched source for the MSD. i DO remember that i made it simple so i could easily (no tools) pop my orange box back in if i had a problem. i soaked my first unit in a sudden downpour bombing around with the hood off

I want the voltage guage on the incoming line to the MSD unit so that I can watch the CRANK and the RUN voltage while driving. This is why I have the gauge hooked up to the small red wire. Once I get time to swap out the voltage regulator, I will see if that fixes the ammeter and my two volt gauges.
I made most of my connections with male/female connectors just in case I need to swap back to my other ignition system. But I am planning on running with the Street Fire box this Spring.

Thanks again for your help.

ohhhh............now i get it!! i didn't realize that you wanted the 2 on the same line (even though you said it before,duh).

I have a volt gauge for the RUN/CRANK/MSD feed, and then I have a volt gauge for the battery.
Sorry about the confusion. I don't get all my details down when I type.

I can't beleive you just didn't turn the distrbutor back a tad to see if it ran better. Not as accurate as a light, but would have told you right away if it was causing it to run rough. Could always put it back. Just mark origanal position with a sharpy or something.
I also agree that your gauge issue is unrelated to your ignition problem. But might have been caused by your ignition install. You did say you had some wires at the old ballast connection joined together and it was wrong, didn't you? Might have burned some thing in the charging when hooking wires up. Although a current flow issue from a bad charging system might mess with your ignition, I doubt it would bump it up some 30 degrees.

""I can't beleive you just didn't turn the distrbutor back a tad to see if it ran better.""
I thought of doing that but I wanted to see for myself what one timing light versus another would do. It ended up showing me that the swap from the FBO ecu to the MSD box changed my initial timing by just 2 degrees.

My guage appears to be two problems, the loose connector at the alternator and maybe a bad voltage regulator. After I fixed the alternator connector , the gauge fluctuations cleaned up a little but they are currently still unstable. I also have my interior lights and my dash lights dimming/surging as my volt gauges are fluctuating. I have a new VR but now I just need some time to install it and see if it works.

I think that my main problem during the install was that I first hooked up distributor correctly but I had an old dial back timing light. Then I reversed the wires (wrong) at the distributor and used a new dial back timing light. Then I reversed the distributor wires again (correct again) and I used a standard timing light/timing tape and the timing now appears to be accurate.

Thanks for your reply.

Great to hear.
Sounds like the regulator should cure your jumpy chargibg system.

I now have the fluctuating ammeter/voltage gauges fixed by using the diode that comes with the Street Fire ignition box kit. I added the diode to the SMALL RED wire that the RUN/CRANK 12v input voltage is attached too.
I have attached a marked-up schematic showing where I placed the diode.

Note: Per MSD, this diode is used in the case of RUN-ON. In my case, it fixed my fluctuating guages at idle.

Now I just need Spring to show up so that I can drive the car.