I have a 79 pickup with an 83 engine. apparently the person who did the swap wanted to save some money and some how wired up a GM ingnition module... so now my truck has been bucking and losing power. I brought it to a toyota mechanic and he thought it was losing spark because of the GM module so he put a new one in. it worked for a while then started back up recently. i was wondering if anyone else has had this problem or if any one knows how to put a toyota one in so that i dont have to deal with a crappy amercian part in my truck. Thanks

 

The Toyota mechanic replaced a GM ignition module with another GM ignition module?

You may want to go over all the wiring if the genius that owned it last was into experimenting.

The part is probably from Mexico if that is any consolation.

 

DL the FSM and figure out what they cut/wired up
http://www.ncttora.com/fsm/index.html

 

The GM one is pretty simple if it is the 4wire module with 2 wires on each side.

one side gets a A/C reference signal from the pick-up coil, and converts it into a D/C signal to trigger the coil.

Have you checked the basics like spraying down your plug wires with water to check for arcing?

 

if you did a search there are right ups on it, do not know if i seen it here or on pirate.

 

The gm ignition module is a cheap upgrade/swap over instead of having to buy a 400.00 dollar replacement ignitor from toyota. You can find more information about this swap in the faq section on the pirate forums.

 

Mine has been running a GM module for almost a year now and I haven't had a problem. The biggest problem I had was they told me to use a GM coil and I never got it to work on it. I put the Toyota coil back in and she has not missed a beat since. When I did the conversion I pulled the wiring harness off of the old ignitor and mated it to the new ignitor(ignition module). The main reason was just incase the GM module didn't work, I could pull and replace with out having to mess with the toyota wiring. When I pulled the ignitor apart, you would be surprised at how small of a part is in that big box. The only big item I had to do was solder a 1K ohm resistor in for the tach. Check the coil if it's a GM coil make sure it's not giving you the problem. If you have questions, type away, I can send pictures if you want them.

 

Looks like the point is that the GM conversion is common and good, but that doesn't mean that whoever did it on your truck did it right...You're sure though that it's a spark issue? Just making sure you've checked things like fuel filter, carb etc. first.

 

There are all sorts of things that can be made to work with some modifications. They pretty much all work on the same principles. Just like you can wire an aftermarket stereo into your truck, or bolt up a later-model engine or even Chevy engine.