MSD shift light

My MSD shift light has begun to flicker at idle (constantly) touch the gas and raise the RPM it stops, soon as it returns to idle goes back to steady flickering, nothing has been changed in the combo, not sure why this started. Anybody else run into this ?? We run a BBC, w/ crank trigger, MSD billet dist, 7AL-2 box, MSD plug wires, HVC-2 coil, and never had any problems. I did try a new RPM chip in it, same result. Time for a new shift light ?? Thanks, Mike

 

Bad ground connection possibly? I run an Autometer light not MSD, but you might start with just checking the connections before spending more cash on a new light. I was having issues with my tach & shift light this last weekend, touched a ground wire and the solder broke. Crimped a new connector on there and the problem was no more.

 

We ran into a similar issue with two different shift lights. Do all of the LED's on the board flicker or only a few? There were only a few flickering on ours. We found the snap ring that holds the LED board in place had moved in it's groove & was contacting a couple of the LED to circuit board connection points. We re-positioned the snap ring & applied some silicone to it. No issues since.

D. Ross

 

We have an Autometer on the top of the blower behind the injector. The LED light we have is this one:



It started flickering, lighting up 2, 4 or 6 of the LED's at idle and was just screwing up. I have it hooked to an MSD tach adapter, a window switch and an RPM switch so it comes on at stage RPM and at the shift point.

I sent it back and they gave me a new one. I put it on and it screwed up too. The fix was to ground it.

Did I say ground it? Yes, ground it.

RG

 

Randy,

Did you just ground the case, or the internals, as there is no ground wire on it. Or have I missed something?

Thanks

 

Ground the negative supply wire. Anything negative anywhere on the car should be grounded in my often misguided opinion. It resolved all kinds of issues that seem to pop up just when you didn't expect them to. Make sure the negative side of the ignition is grounded along with ground straps to the block, heads, etc., then any accessories that run off a 12 volt source like tachs , shift lights, tach adapters should all have a direct ground on the negative side even if your starting to think it's getting a little redundant.

 

I added a ground wire from the back of the dash, all the way back (it's a rear engine funny car) to the Neg battery cable on the back of the engine block, and problem solved !! I went back and stacked every ground wire on the dash to a common bolt, one of the wires is the aforementioned one that goes back to the Neg cable, just to be sure. Thanks for all the responses

 

Ours is grounded & still did exactly as Randy G. described until we performed the previously described fix.

Dave.