dsroka80503

Well, it has been over a year with the MSD Atomic EFI system on my 66. I am here to officially declare this the biggest piece of garbage on the planet. The car runs like absolute garbage, eats gas like it is going out of style, smokes, smells and loves to stall everytime you push in the clutch. It is more difficult to start the car than it was with the original carb on it.

Before you say it is a tune issue, if I had a dime for everytime MSD support (and i use that term very loosely) has sent a "new and updated tune", I would be a very rich man. The first garage just threw up their hands and said get it out of here, we have replaced all parts, re-tuned it who knows how many times, we are done with it. I took it to one of the MSD "Speed Shops" recommended on their website. He has played with it for 3 weeks and was told by MSD "We are aware of these issues, try this new tune." He still thinks it can be fixed, I don't think so.

I post this so anyone considering running an EFI system will stay away from this junk. I easily have $3K into this between labor and parts and the car is completely undriveable. I am headed to SEMA in a few weeks so I am curious what they will have to say at their booth. Curious what other people have experienced, the car is bone stock from a motor standpoint.

69mach1377

Keep us posted...

fastbackford351

Damn. That's disappointing to hear. Nothing I hate worse than spending a dumper load of money on what turns out to be crap. I wonder if the Holley setup is any better?

proeagles

I'm guessing you have way too much cam, not enough lob separation. I had the same problem with a FAST unit on a 351 Windsor.

dsroka80503

Update. So, after close to year of throwing parts at it from MSD, the first shop said get it out of here, we are done with wasting our time on this thing. So I took it to an MSD speed shop. The guy knows his stuff. He ended up getting the entire unit warrantied from MSD and they sent out a brand new unit from Summit. Turns out that he found a short in the temperature sensor on the unit, somewhere in the wiring harness so the car was always reading hot and over-fueling. All good, right?

Not so fast. $650 later re-installing the MSD unit, the car still stalls. Idle seems to be better and it doesn't stink or smoke as much, but still randomly stalls when you push in the clutch. Shop was optimistic that it might learn some more, but I am less optimistic. The cam is very mild in the car, not enough to make a difference. The problem with these Atomic systems are that there are very little adjustments, everything is run from sensors and a tune. So if something doesn't work, you throw another tune at it, and another, and another. I can't even tell you how many times the car has been flashed with a "latest" tune. It is certainly better and has more power, but the stalling is incredibly dangerous. I will update after a few hundred miles of driving and see if anything gets better.