A friend of mine asked me to look at his 383 stroker Duster with dual Fi-Tech throttle body EFI and a blower on it. Seems he had someone install the EFI and an aftermarket dash gauges and ign switch. Problem was it would not start and had no spark when cranking but did have spark when jumping the starter with the key in the run spot. It has MSD that's not tied into the Fi-Tech and it was the classic no volts on the run wire to the MSD when cranking. Well the ign switch did not have an ign 2 terminal so I wired a relay off the start circuit of the aftermarket ign switch to come on while cranking and power the run circuit to the MSD. Now it starts and then dies in about 3 seconds and wont keep running. So I dig in some more and find no RPM signal to the Fi-Tech module as the person who installed it for him did not hook it up. So I hook it to the tach output on the MSD and still no RPM signal ?? I call Fi-Tech and they told me to touch the Fi-Tech module RPM wire to 12 volts real fast and look for RPM on the Fi-Tech hand held in the car. Still no RPM so they send me software update on my E-mail to update the Fi-Tech module. Well if came in compressed files I was not to familiar with so I asked my son Ron Jr was could he figure it out and he says sure dad. Took him with me back to the guys house and my son took his laptop and down loaded the software to the Fi-Tech hand held and then to the Fi-Tech module from the handheld and bingo she fires up and runs and has an RPM signal ! That's the first time I worked on a Fi-Tech EFI but it was a lot like the Holley Sniper we put on my sons Dart. I have had some say the Fi-Tech tech line is no good but the guy was very helpful with me and knew just what to tell me to check and sent the right software to fix it. I thought I was going to have to replace the Fi-Tech module but it was nice my son and I could fix the car for the guy as he is now a good friend of mine. I keep seeing more and more EFI on our muscle cars so I figure I might as well get used to working on some. It was a nice sounding eng once we got it running. Ron

Yeah I see this type of problem all the time. When there is a missing piece of software people can't see it so they don't know it is missing. If the carb linkage is missing they might spot it. As more people switch to EFI they will all get better at solving problems. When you debug EFI problems you just have to use a different fault tree than when you debug a carb. Same process but different tree. Good job on figuring it out.