MG Sports Cars

I'm having some issues in getting my rv8 mg started
I'm almost positive I have a burnt up module in the distributor but I figured I'd check here

I'm running a petronix ignitor distributor from D&D as well as a flamethrower I coil supplied through them.
the engine is a 4.9 stroker - 215 front cover.

What is the correct way to have the coil/distributor hooked up?

Ignition and + Dist. wire hooked up to the positive side of the coil
and the (-) dist. wire is hooked up to the negative side of the coil.

Is there anything that could be wrong? per d&d no ballast resistor is to be used.

I put the key in the 'on' position and instantly smelled something burning and saw smoke from the dist. wires.
Thats what makes me believe theres an issue with the module being shorted out.

Also there is no spark or signal coming from the dist.

Thanks for reading

Hey Robert
Sounds like it's wired correctly.
The pertronix modules are good but they won't tolerate any shorting on the ground side (black wire) to power.
Once you've released the smoke they aren't any good any more.
Two mistakes that I see often are
#1 the engine not grounded well to the battery and the body. If your coil is mounted to the body then the black wire tries to take the load instead of the ground cable and "poof".
#2 The battery gets connected backwards.( or the car gets jumped backwards) Just one instance will fry the module.
It's not likely that the module was bad out of the box. So make sure you locate the problem before you put in another.

Hope thats helpfull
Cheers
Fred

Thought I would updated this in case anyone using the forum search encountered a simlar problem.
I found out the distributor module had been burnt up so I orderd a new one.

The coil was connected to the body and grounded correctly - the distributor was hooked up to the positive side of the coil as well as the negative side correctly. I hooked up the TWO wires running from the ECU to the coil(negative side) per the directions PROVIDED with the harness.I had previously found a short in the ignition wire which I fixed and then hooked up to the positive side to the coil. I was sure this would fix my issues, installed the new distributor module and was ready to go.

Went to put the key to the on position and smoke poured out.. burnt up another module! Damnit!

Went back and double checked everything.. found that one of the ecu wires was hot with the key on.. since this was hooked up to the negative side of the coil it was the culprit of the burnt up module...

Called the company who made the harness to have a talk.. apparently they not only mislabeled the wires that needed to be hooked up to the coil - but also failed to tell me it was a later model harness(it was marked as an early model) and one of the wires needs to hooked up to the positive side, the other the negative side..

I have a new module on the way so hopefully I can finally start up this project which I've been working on since my last year of high school and first couple years during college. Super excited! I've driven my fathers 3.5L swapped MG but I imagine the 4.9L stroker will have a little more OOMPH for auto-x and drift events!

Even though the harness was mislabeled , I realize that in the end I should have triple checked everything and verified for myself where each wire went. Oh well, you live and you learn.. and thats the most important thing to learn from your mistakes isn't it?

Anyways I just want to say how thankful I am for the help this forum has provided over the years, and thank you Curtis for making this wonderful community available to us.
I hope others can learn from my mistake and avoid having repurchase parts.

Cheers everyone, safely fast, and keep it on the track!

-Robert