Ignition upgrade for 7.4
 

I had plans to upgrade my ignition on my T-7.4's to the Crane, DUI, or MSD. Teague has never heard of anyone doing it, need some feedback from someone that can verify if it can or can't be done.

Sure you can do it.
On a stock 7.4, it will make absolutely no difference in performance.

Stick with 7.4 ignition. No change in performance, others will chime in

Ditto. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Put your $$ in the fuel tank.

Agreed, the stock ignition is more then enough.

Well, OK then--thanks guys!!

I changed out my thunderbolt for a pro billet msd 2yrs ago and it smoothed out nice, adjustable advance curve with the differant size springs was nice also. I've read allot of negatives about msd on these boards but I'm happy with mine. New wires and blaster coil at same time.

Replace the stock coil with an MSD Baster 3 High vibration coil, that's what I've done and it works great for 10 years now. Even on a blown 900 HP motor....
P.S. Teague is absolutely no help to the do it yourselfer. They may give you advice if you spend 35,000 or so on an engine though, until it's out of warranty!

My cousin has a pair of Merc 330hp/454cid engines that we did several mods on. The engines made 461hp/510 ft/lbs of torque on Tom Earhart's dyno with the stock Merc Thunderboat distributor/ignition. We added a Crane HI 6M ignition box and PS-92 coil to the Merc Thunderbolt distributor and made a couple pulls on the dyno up to 5500rpm---No Difference in power!

If I anticipate upgrading heads and converting to a carb wouldn't the adjustability of Crane or MSD igntion make it a worthwhile upgrade?

Leave the stock ignition just add a higher output coil, I run stock with a 60,000 volt coil and .050 gap on the plugs. Smoothed up the idle a little, starts and runs great. To many mishaps with the MSD distributors, how many have heard of the rotor grabbing the cap whipping the wires into a birds nest leaving dead in the water!!!

No, I run a blown 900 HP on mine with a blaster coil, it runs PERFECTLY! Just add a Blaster 3 coil.. $65.00 and you are done...

I have heard a lot of nigthmare stuff about MSD distributors and ignition boxes. I have MSD billet distributors and not ever had that "bird nest" thing happen to me, but when I originally bought my boat I had one engine reverse timing as we increased in RPM...it was very strange. We thought it might have been "cam walk" and we checked for it. We changed the cap and rotor, new plugs, switched ignition boxes, checked the ignition box wiring, etc, and it still did the same thing. We didn't even think that it was the magetic pickup, but the internals were all still pretty rusty. The only thing we didn't do was swap distributors with the better running engine. Using the same MSD billet distributor, we finally installed an MSD crank trigger system and it works flawlessly now---for 7 years. The nice thing is that it's pretty much maintenance free.