HEI Module Died

[Jack Boelte]

The HEI module on my '84 Suburban died this weekend.  I thought I'd post what happened, might help somebody else out.

Wife was using it, stopped at the store, wouldn't restart.  She called me and said she thought she may have flooded it.  I told her to hold the gas pedal to the floor, she did and it started.  She got home and left the truck running and came inside.  She was going to go out again, but the truck died and would not restart. (???)  Our truck has never just died, unless it is cold, just started.

We tried restarting it.  It would occasionally pop, but never run.  I stuck a screwdriver in the #1 spark plug wire, no spark.

I broke out the manual and checked the coil first.  One of the tests said to read from the (yellow) tachometer wire to the output post in the distributor cap.  it was supposed to read between 6K and 30K Ohms.  It erad open (infinity).  So, I thought I had a bad coil.  No problem, Autozone has a lifetime warranty on theirs.  Got a new coil, read it out before installing it.  Uh-oh.  reads the same as the old one.

The Haynes manual doesn't offer much help in troubleshootinng the HEI module (big suprise), all it says is to test it with a HEI tester attached to the spark plug.  (The pick up coil checked good per the manual.)  So, I took the HEI module to Autozone hoping they could check it.  They did, it was bad, bought a new one for ?.00.  Runs good, last long time.

I hope this helps somebody, it was a little confusing.  I always panic a little when my automobile won't start.  I'm glad I was able to figure it out and not have to rely an a shop.

[LT]

Jack,

Thanks for the post. I really like the method you used to solve the problem. One should try to start as cheaply as is possible.