Follow up - Just installed an FBO box on my Hemi

For what it is worth for those looking which way to go on ignition systems. I just installed an FBO box on my Hemi Charger. Two test runs in, working very well. I always had a bit of discontent with the set up I had in that sitting in traffic, with a 248 @50 duration cam and an automatic, the car was never totally comfortable. I swear I could feel the plugs fouling until I could get in the clear, where it would then run great. I was running a vintage Mopar Chrome box.

So two runs in, it seems to be idling stronger with more “purpose”, a bit cleaner also. Acceleration is good, a noticeable improvement when punching it off a 35 mph cruise. Starts quickly. I am timed at 17.5 degrees at 900 idle in neutral, 35 degrees all in mechanically...this is where I was the chrome box as well. I am running a standard vacuum advance. Factory tach (repro).

More to come. For those wondering how I did the ballast, I bought one of the new ones that don’t have any filling on the back, this let me easily remove and replace the resistance unit with a 10 ga wire that I crimped then soldered in place. I then filled the back with some white JB Weld to keep the whole thing stable. I was also very deliberate to make sure the box was well grounded (I have it hidden behind the passenger headlight assembly).

So I will see if this works out. The plugs will tell the story in a few weeks (and will it be reliable of course). If this doesn’t work as a long term solution then I think I might try the Ignitor III with the multi-spark…though I worry a bit how that will work with the factory tach, and I would miss my full advance timing light (as I hear these are often problems with multi-spark).

DK

I’m not familiar with the fbo setup. Sounds like it’s doing what you want. I used to run petronix 2 on my cars. This time I had a distributor built by a mopar specialist since I wanted to keep my factory one to swap back in for looks or as a spare. The guy strongly encouraged me to run just the 1st gen petronix as he felt the number 2 had a high fail rate of about 1 in 4 either out of the box or soon thereafter. He also felt the 3 version had more to go wrong.

The first gen has done well on my stock 440.

Here is the FBO website. They sell through Mancini’s and direct plus a few other places. From a wiring standpoint, a direct replacement to a Mopar box but without the ballast.

https://4secondsflat.com/Ignition.html

Thanks for your comment SomeCarGuy, interesting.

Beautiful engine bay

Lot of hype and BS on that website

I'll pass.

I'm sticking with MSD. That chrome box was never intended to be used on a street car. That is beautiful engine compartment though. None of my junk ever looked that good.

He did a vac advance distributor for me for the 512" car, and it worked great, but I haven't tried his box.
For the hot rods & race cars, my default has been a rebuilt & curved MP dist, the old-style MSD6AL, and the F150 epoxy coil.
I had a RevNator box in one car and swapping it for a good OEM box made no difference.
That's a website - and/or a conversation - that was full of hype but no real tech.

I'll be interested to see how the FBO box works out.
And yessir, that's a proper engine compartment

i've tried a couple of the fbo kits. the first one started out great but over a short period of time i started to experience rough running and a difficult hot start. i went back to my LX101 box and the engine smoothed out. i never figured out exactly what the issue was but i always wondered if shooting 14.5-15 volts constantly at the pertronix coil that came with the kit was the issue for a street car,.... . i now run 10 volts to the same coil and the engine is smoother. i put another kit on my other car and the box LED kept blinking which meant something wasn't right. don at fbo thought it was the wiring harness to the box. i changed the harness but never put the fbo box back on to test it. i'm not slamming the fbo products because i've had good luck with their stuff before. for me i might have wasted $400 on two kits. ignition gadgets, no matter who makes them (and i've blown a lot of money on them), just aren't a good substitute for a good tune-up.

I can't remember which cars but I had two come through the shop with FBO distributors that were way out of whack.
Will also say sometimes the "power of suggestion" can cloud ones judgement

I'm surprised that he is still in business, I thought he had died several years back
I know he screw several local Oregon racers around here on bad parts and not standing behind the parts he has made with the FBO logo on them

As quoted from the 2009 Mopar Performance catalog..
"D. Chrome Electronic Control Unit
For a hotter spark, use this general high-performance control unit (up through 8,000 rpm).
1 P4120534 ECU, Chrome, Hemi/ Big Block/ Small Block.."

The chrome box was a stepup over the orange box intended for general purpose street use, but it was the gold box noted only for Race Only..
"E. Super Gold Electronic Control Unit
The culmination of years of high-performance ignition system development. Designed to outperform any ignition unit previously offered to Mopar racers, it will handle the high current demand by the high-performance coil (P3690560), while keeping dwell variation to less than 1° from 1,000 to 10,000 rpm. Dwell is set for maximum spark output at low or high engine speeds. The Super Gold ECU provides outstanding performance from idle to 12,000 rpm.
1 P4120600 ECU, Super Gold, Race Only, Hemi/ Big Block/ Small.."

Just my $0.02...

The original Mopar chrome box with the blue heat sink was race only and required a special coil. Those work great
Mopar went bankrupt between then and now, some of their vendors have had very low quality control after bankruptcy and we, us customers, found out about some of those parts the hard way

Thanks for the engine bay compliments.

I also had tried one of the blue JEGS ECU boxes. So I went chrome (when built), blue JEGS, chrome and now FBO.

On the Charger the JEGS blue box was “uninspiring”, maybe a better idle but less overall feel in performance. On my Challenger I still have one of the blue boxes on it, but the Challenger is bone stock other than the electronic ignition set up and it runs very well.

I admit the new generations of “mopar like” ECU boxes leave me cold. I took the JEGS blue box that I had on my Charger apart and was amazed at the use of sand before the application of the potting material, the not very robust links to the connector and the completely nonfunctional pretend transistor on the front of the box (so it has the Mopar look).

This whole sequence led me to try the FBO which I had thought about for some time. I should note that this has been a pretty slow progression on my part…I have had the Charger for 10 years and the car has always run well, I am just trying to make it a bit better. I have a couple of plugs that foul sooner than they should, and after trying hotter plugs, different plug brands, lots of carb tuning with only modest improvement, I decided to start messing with the ignition. I have a SUN distributor machine, so I also set up my own distributors and try different curves and use the FBO limiter plate for the length of the advance curve..that plate works really well.

When I was racing a box stock Slant Duster I tried swapping ignition boxes at the track. I tested a brand new orange box against a new chrome box and my tried and true stock box from NAPA. The orange box ran the same as a stock box, and the chrome box slowed the car down. No one could tell my why.

How's that for useless trivia?

I've run quality parts store boxes for years w/o a problem Also the orange mopar box that came with the conversion kit's ~30 years back. Still working fine. mst of this applies to street driven 7 limited track use at ~ 6K rpm limits.
I also have a couple of Chrome boxes in the ignition stash pile that are likely from the late 70's. Have to get them out and test them. No names on them as I recall, I think one has a red H/sink the other a blue

I think these discussions with out specifics of the coil and ballast values are not very useful. Also, the health of the motor (wires, plugs, compression, mixture quality). As RPM increases the actual charging time available reduces quickly before the next firing. By the time you're at 6000 rpm, there is only 2.5 msec of charge time between firings (even less as there is a plug spark duration too), and coil stored energy is significantly less. It is no longer about the box, but everything else.

Yes there are box differences that matter, but just because several different folks use the same box, doesn't mean they will all see the same results in my opinion.

the FBO system deletes the ballast resistor with a jumper wire so that takes that out of the discussion. the FBO requires 12 volts to the coil and is supplied with a Pertronix coil. with the ballast gone the coil will now get whatever voltage the charging system provides; at least mine did. now there's 14-15 volts to the coil. i check the dwell on boxes and usually it will be somewhere between 35-40+ degrees; depending on the box. the FBO box i used had 15 degrees dwell,.... . so, i called Don at FBO and asked about that and he explained it to me and the truth is most of the explanation blew over the top of my head; basically didn't understand it all. i got to thinking that a mopar kit used a 1.25 ohm ballast (vs none with FBO) and will run 6-7 volts at the coil with twice the dwell (orange box is around 36 degrees). is this a case where less dwell time is needed to compensate for twice the voltage? is the spark voltage the same to the plugs; just done differently? i don't know but another one of those more questions than answers thing. anyhow, the soft rev limiter worked well which is what i needed but the driving situation stifled me. maybe i'll re-visit this at a later time.

OK. To answer Dragon Slayer’s questions.

What is in there now is the FBO, no ballast and the 40111 epoxy coil which is 40K and 1.5 ohm primary.

What was in there was either the blue JEGS box or a real Mopar chrome box. Coil was the same. Ballast was 1/2 ohm.

Motor is a ‘68 Hemi built for the restoration in 2010 by a guy in Florida, Ed Hillman. Stock compression, cam is the Mopar P4349257 hydraulic which is 248 duration at 50 degrees. Lift is 524 and 507. I do not know how the cam was installed (spec is 104 cl). I run the distributor at 18 degree +/- initial and 35 degree total. I have had no detonation.

When I got the car 10 years ago after it was just built it did detonate a bit at part throttle, running at 25 degrees initial and a 36 advance, with what was a very fast curve. The car was running a rebuilt distributor with a Pertronix Ignitor I, that distributor had very inconsistent spark and advance and I replaced it with a Mopar electronic that I rebuilt using my Sun machine. Spark is very clean and consistent coming out of the distributor on the Sun machine, advance curve is now more of a gentle hump towards full advance. I do run vacuum advance. The carbs are set up with stock jets. In the rear carb I am running the stock 7258 rod on the passenger and 6855 on the driver instead of the stock 6954 rod. In front I have 7057 passenger instead of 6859 and 6857 instead of 6859. Yellow front springs, orange back. I run a mix of Sunoco 110 which a station near me sells and some pump 92 when convenience and an empty tank dictate. Engine idle vacuum is weak, at around 10 inches though steady.

In the first few years that I had the car it fouled all the plugs quickly and regularly. Over the years I improved that over a series of progressions to where #1 fouls, #2 is pretty dirty and the rest of the plugs look great with a nice tan color. As you can see, I might be running the car a bit lean as I became obsessed with the plugs. I get about a 100 rpm or a bit more drop from 900 when put it in gear. Torque converter is a 3000 rpm stall. 4.10 rear.

So I tossed the Pertronix I based on all the plugs fouling and the distributor failure, went with the Chrome box (probably should have tried orange first), then tried the JEGS box since why not though that seemed to make the idle worse. Back to chrome and now the FBO which I need more seat time with to see how it is doing…seems well after only two drives.

Carbs are set up at idle using Dragon Slayer’s advise in previous posts…front carb butterflies closed and using the back carb as primary. I did take the front carb a little too lean on the springs and rods and had a lean backfire show up, so quickly went richer to where I am now.

My goal is to improve its manners when caught in traffic, but more importantly get better life out of the plugs. I run Champion 12’s, tried Autolite but that actually made things worse. I do not run the washer on the plugs, counting on the tubes to keep the seal. I do change the tubes as needed. Overall, the car runs well, pulls very strong like a Hemi should, is clearly more powerful than my stock 440. I have debated just swapping the cam to something less, but tuning seems easier and I do like the way it runs (and sounds). I don’t want to go to MSD, all the wiring is pretty much stock now, jumpering the ballast was a big step from stock for me.

I run mine at 34 locked out with MSD. Starts easy and helps it to run clean at idle and low speed. A modern grid where you could get it to run in the 40's cruzing would work even better as long as you could trust it to retard when you open throttle.

It still is a series circuit. I don't know what is in the FBO box, but the ballast could have been moved into the box so the external one is no longer required. Regardless, the transistors and diodes in the box also have a voltage drop effect. So despite 12V at coil input, the ground terminal won't measure 0. There would be a voltage between 12 and 0 at the negative of the coil. The box drops that voltage to zero battery ground. There is now micro chip technology to control current flow to coil, but the old tech the current was set by the selection of the box, ballast and coil. But besides coil resistance, the inductance matters more. Determines how much current coil can handle, how fast it can charge. Wrong coil selection that charges too slow for the set current, would drop off in energy as rpm rises. Regardless of your dwell, you are firing a spark plug every 2.5msec at 6000 RPM engine speed with a V8 single coil. No time to charge coil with the old tech. Which by the way the MOPAR boxes had RPM limits around 5K for the HP BB 4spd cars. Think it was 5200 or 5400 for an automatic.

If you allow more current to flow the coil charges faster which is good for high rpm, but street driving the coil saturates too fast and overheats. Damage to coil. So it is all trade offs.

The GM system is mostly better because of the coil in my opinion. They could send more current to the coil all the time.

MSD is capacitive. Charge an Inductor (coil) in mill secs. Charge a capacitor in micro seconds. Hence MSD can discharge the required Voltage at much high rpms to get sufficient KV to the plug. It is a different process.

There are some really good tech articles on how much voltage and for what duration is required to jump the gap and ignite the mixture.

The other funny aspect especially with multi spark is that if the ignition misfires at normal fire time, if you look at how fast the piston is rotating at high RPM, the second spark to ignite mixture provides no useful power, just better emissions

Interesting thought. I run a plate that FBO makes that limits the advance on a Mopar distributor. You can set it wherever you want. I could go big on initial and set it up with only something like 10 degrees total mechanical. The vacuum advance adds 9 when in use.

the two FBO advance plates i have are very inaccurate.

It is very much trial by error. I also make sure to deburr them before using them as I have seen them hang up occasionally.

But having said all that, they are easy to use and change, I don't weld so welding the slots instead would be a challenge. I also think they work better on real Mopar distributors versus the current repros, the Mopar distributor weights are beefer and the axial play is less with the spring clip set up.

Just to add to this, the petronix setup has a fixed dwell of 22 degrees.

Will bee interesting to see if and how long that 40111 epoxy coil will last running no ballast resistor - Keep an eye on heat and stress cracks around the tower area

Ask me how I know

Did you try any other coils with your Mopar Performance Chrome ECU ?

Anyways


Don on his website clearly states
DO NOT use any MSD Blaster, Accell or parts store Coil, they are incorrect for the Micro-Processor Type FBO Ignition Box and will not perform correctly and will damage the ECU. The Processor has been programmed to maximize output to the 40011 coil. No other coil that we have tested will perform as well as the Pertronix 40011. The processor program is burned to match that coil. (We burn our programming to the processor in house)

Dragon slayer is 100% dead on with his details

All the ECUs I tested on the street - Trying to match the correct coil / ballast resistor in todays Chinese world is 90% the battle

Direct connection and Mopar Performance made it easy for us back in the 70s 80s and 90s

The Pertronix 40111 epoxy coil and FBO’s recommended oil filled pertronix 40011 coils are the same spec, so hopefully ok. I could just go with the oil filled. I did see a post elsewhere that FBO told another user they were the same.

With the Mopar chrome box and the JEGS box that I previously tried on this car I ran the Accel 8140. I have been running that Accel coil for some time, normally with an original Mopar orange box, on other cars. I paint them black before install. I would be interested with everyone’s take on the Accel coil.

As to the other boxes, China, etc.. To me, it looks like the Summit box and the lower priced Standard box are the same manufacturer based on the housing, paint, etc. I did take a Summit box apart, it was overall similar to the JEGs unit I dissected though it did actually run what looked like a heat shedding device inside the fake outside transistor, where the JEGS fake transistor cover was empty and just screwed on. Also the connector seemed more robust. Both used sand before potting. I did not take the higher priced Standard box apart, though I have those as spares.

As I mentioned, my 440 Challenger is running the blue JEGS box right now, and that is with the Accel 8140 coil. It does run really well (knock on wood) so I have left it alone. Here is the Challenger engine bay, yes I know I am crazy OCD on these. You can see the JEGS box on the upper passenger firewall.

Posts like this seem like debating:

“Should I use flint, chert, or michmetal alloy to set off the gunpowder in the flash pan of my Kentucky rifle”

For 30+ years automakers have spent their $ on
coil on plug ignitions and
special alloy tip sparkplugs like Irridium/Platinum.

Using two spark plugs per cylinder leads to less need for spark advance and less “negative work” due to cylinder pressures prior to top dead center.

Spark gap size
( Saab trying to jump a spark all the way to the piston crown)
and spark duration “burn time”
are widely accepted as more important than
peak flash over voltage
or multi-spark,
characteristics that aftermarket boxes alter.

Isn’t it
“Barking up the wrong tree”
to make efforts like cutting open aftermarket ignition boxes and examining how the epoxy potting looks?

To each his own.
I am not against spending money on whatever experiment gets you out of the easy chair and turning a wrench.

If you are really after performance using a Magnetic induction system has significant draw backs for high performance and high rpm. There is a reason a Capacitive Discharge system is chosen. Or the coil over plugs. If you only have to fire a coil once every revolution, the time to saturate the inductor is much greater by 8x, so even at 12000 rpm you have 4x more time or 10msec to charge the coil. Plenty of time.

Taking apart a bad box to examine not a waste in my opinion. We take everything else apart and mess with it.

Left is an Mopar black box 4111850 from late 70's I assume. Other probably a Standard product box. The Mopar is better constructed, heat and noise shielded with the board. Double grounded to case. Automotive standard. The other barely had the transistor heat sunk via friction, poor construction, and components with age issues. (Electrolic caps). Single ground. Different design too, but that could be an improvement or necessary for the power transistor.
'
The box sand should be a special silica for heat absorption and transfer along with protecting from environment. Whether the compound used meets a high standard???? Prestolite boxes I have seen never have the epoxy potting compound fail. The Mopar boxes do not age well. The compound on the SMP product wasn't full bound to the box. Most came out in hunks allowing the board to be removed easily. I guess you get what you pay for.

I understand you are right about the superiority of CD systems.

But, I have been through near a dozen Mopars over the years and have a locked in to sort of a routine with my cars that I am comfortable with. I look to bring the cars as close as possible to stock, certainly stock appearing. Electronically I bend on the integration of a Mopar ECU in to the stock engine harness to ditch the points. Early on I went with more aggressive builds but this is where I evolved to. I work on them, drive them around, do local cruises and the occasional show. To me the addition of a CD system is an escalation that I would rather not do, preferring to maximize performance stopping short of that. Hence the different type of Mopar style boxes and maybe Pertronix.

I have a bunch of NOS orange and chrome boxes that are original early 4 pin Mopar, even a couple of Standard 4 pin units from an old K-Mart still in their old dusty clamshell from hanging on a retail rack. But the Charger bends my rules above with the hotter build on the engine than stock, so I have been experimenting to see if there is better, but short of a CD system.

The introduction to the market of all the different Mopar style ECUs seems like the wild west with a lot of “less than robust” solutions out there. I tried the blue JEGS unit based on what our collective friend from Mopar Action recommends and sells on his e-bay store. The box does work well on my Challenger, I have been running it two years and it does seem to add a very slight positive change in the performance envelope when compared to the orange box. But I don’t think it is enough for the Hemi in my Charger, it didn’t get me where I want to go with the plugs/tuning.

**UPDATE**

A half a dozen trips in for test and tune, I am feeling hopeful and impressed.

I did feel confident enough after driving it a bit to alter the timing, changing the FBO plate in the distributor to limit the mechanical advance to 12 degrees. This allowed me to do 23 degrees initial and just short of 35 total mechanical at 2500 rpm (the vacuum can adds another 9).

Definitely idling better. Starting well. Pulls stronger, particularly at part throttle acceleration. I will keep messing with it, and see how it does as I drive it more…reliability, the coil as mentioned earlier, and so on.

My 383 / 432

N O S Chrysler 4111850 ECU
Correct Chrysler 3874767 Dual Ballast Resistor (.5 OHM)
Later versions where 1.2 OHM

Very nice!!!!

PM sent

Same with you - Beyond nice

Looks like where on the same page making these factory systems work in todays world
I went a little backwards finding factory original NOS electronics after testing just about everything available today where you are using what’s available now with better luck then I had

Great thread !

So as follow up, to update the string.

It has been four months with the FBO box on my Charger. I am enthusiastically thumbs up on the result. The car is running really well…plugs not fouled, starting easier, smoother idle. I have had the car out a bunch of times for cruises and shows and things have been smooth.

I do not think I will put one on my bone stock 440 Challenger which runs very well on just a standard Mopar ECU. But the Charger motor having the bigger cam, etc. had seemed to really need help and the FBO box was a very large improvement over an original Chrome box that I tried and the HiRev box from JEGS that I also looked at (and is successfully on my Challenger now).

I have, and have had the FBO box on my car for close to 20 years. Everything has been great after a few problems were corrected in the initial usage. The first distributor set up was not a good fit for my setup, but the second setup was perfect. The real issue I had was with the ballast. I had replaced my original wiring harness with one made by Evans (?). It had a 4 pin ballast connector, so I got a 4 pin ballast. We chased all kinds of issues from running great one second to nothing the next. Switched out distributors, changed plugs, set and reset the timing. I was at a show just outside Rochester and a fellow Moparts member solved my problem in a second. Tom Quadrini was looking at my car and asking questions. When I told him all the issues with the way it was running, he told me the ballast was the problem. The 4 pin was throwing off the resistance. When I switched to the 2 pin, the problem was solved.

X 2 on the cars coming in the shop

What would be helpful to know is how was it wired? Were you using the second ballast to the FBO box or was the issue of using the wrong resistor to the coil?

would a FBO box from 20yrs ago be the black box and not the newer box with the rev limiter? if so then it's basically a LX101 with an american made transistor. i used to have one and for the most part liked it.

The box I used was the newest version, at least as of the last couple of years. I jumpered the ballast by replacing the resistor in the ceramic by an 10 gage wire. The distributor is a 1973 Mopar electronic ignition unit that I recurved and limited the advance on by using one of the FBO limiter plates. I mounted the ECU behind my front passenger headlight, to keep it away from heat and have the engine compartment continue to look stock.

I can’t speak to others’ issues. For me, the experience has been really positive. The difference between the FBO and other standard ECU’s is “seat of the pants” real.

7it certainly looks nice albeit not stock appearing. If one is putting that much effort into the box hopefully the same followed through to the electrical portion so you may be right.
So my next question would be what exactly have they done and could it be retrofitted to a "stock" appearing box for the resto guy's ?