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ignition questions and which ecm on 318?

Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2010 11:26 am
by g36
have a 78 f32 with 318's with the electronic factory ignition considering replacing the ecm, ballast resistor and coil
have you bought these parts recently where and what part numbers. seems there are different ecms out there that might work.the ecm i have is dripping its guts and i did notice at the end of last season if i had run the boat at around 2900rpms for about 45-1hr it would start to stumble and stall. wonderend about the ignition system getting hot and breaking down. ecm or other parts coil,resistor.
i know i can switch parts from engine to engine to narrow the problem. havent done that yet. but i figured the parts could be original and may be getting tired. i also thought about replacing the distributor with mallory or pertronix marine distributor and gettiing rid of the original igniton.thoughts on that? but if you have replaced the parts above i would like to see the costs or benefits associated

Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2010 9:15 pm
by koviak
Had Chrysler 318's in my Luhrs before I bought a Trojan. You can get the ECM from auto store (NAPA) but ballast resister will need to be marine type (potted in epoxy). Yes I did change my ignition to Mallory electronic and it ran very well. Be sure to use all components that they recommend as to not burn out the magnetic pick-up module in the dist. That was a $125.00 mistake I made. Timing is very easy to set and no more ECM to leak from overheating.