Real Fiero Tech

Yes, I know that this is an easy one that most could do with their eyes closed. But somebody somewhere hasn't done it so when I did one recently I took pictures to document it. Hopefully this will help somebody eventually.

Step 1: Remove distributor cap. There are two screws, one is circled in red, one is on the other side of the cap. They take a phillips screwdriver or a 7/32" nut driver. If you remove the coil wire and one or two plug wires you'll be able to set the cap aside and leave the other wires connected.




You should now have something that looks like this:




That black thing in there with the wires plugged into it is the ignition module. Remove the three wire connectors. One is inside the cap and is shown with the yellow arrow. The other two are outside the distributor cap and can't be seen in this photo. Remove the two screws (circled in red) that hold down the ignition module. They are 7/32" hex heads.




It should now look something like this:




Clean up all the dirt and goo in there and make it look like this:




Now spread the new goo (it should be included with the new module) on to the mounting surface of the module and re-assemble. Piece of cake.



One final thing. Use a genuine GM module. Don't use a module that looks like this or you'll be doing the job over again soon.

Doug's the man.

Can i use this post to start a tech article section?

I wish Doug would have posted this a few months ago when the module on the car he sold me went bad...ironic eh?

Hehe just giving you crap, it wasn't a big deal. Stupid 2.8l.

Nice write up though, although I must say I'm dissapointed in the photography. Where be da ghosts?

eHoward wrote:Can i use this post to start a tech article section?

Yep, I remembered that there was talk about this so that's why I took the pictures. When I did the fuel pump R&R I was too busy swearing at those @#$% rubber lines to take pictures, so no pictorial write up for that one.

Aaron, if it makes you feel any better, I recently had to change one on my Formula, too. (The pics in this thread are from a customer car, not mine).

Two things that should be added. A picture to reference the pick up coil.



And the compound that should be used under the module for best results. Heat sink grease is cheap, more thermally conductive than dielectric grease, and has never failed me.



I had three aftermarket modules fail using the supplied dielectric grease, because it is designed as an insulator, rather than a thermal conductor. The heat sink grease has ceramic in it so that it does not conduct electricity, while allowing as much heat to disapate as possible.

Chase Race wrote: Aaron, if it makes you feel any better, I recently had to change one on my Formula, too. (The pics in this thread are from a customer car, not mine).

I think its funny how you had to do the headlight motors in your Formula as well, and how my GT's headlight motor went out too...lol They are connected to each other now. You better not blow an engine or anything :thumbleft:

oh fuck, that's what that thing is.... Never had to change one, but seen it when changing the cap. I'm sure you'll be grateful that i've rated you positive.

p8ntman442 wrote:
I had three aftermarket modules fail using the supplied dielectric grease, because it is designed as an insulator, rather than a thermal conductor. The heat sink grease has ceramic in it so that it does not conduct electricity, while allowing as much heat to disapate as possible.

I use the same arctic silver that I use on cpu's