Are there any gains to be made by going with msd ignition components. Is it worth the investment on a mostly stock '99 2.2L?

What part #s would I need. It seems that there are two ways of doing it...ie coils only, or completely replacing the factory icm with an msd unit? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Worth the investment, hell no... gains? um, no, might be helpful if you go FI...hotter, multiple sparks with a MSD



Don't buy from MANTAPART!!
There is no easy ways to get HP, no magic box or gizmo... And if you get more hp, there's no way to make your car still behave and sound like a stock one. More hp usually makes your car louder, more vibrations and harder to drive...but still people hope or think maby there's some magic way to have it all, comfort, stock sound and drive.

to my knowledge upgraded ignitions are only helpfully if your car doesn't have the power to run the plugs. It might be worth while if you had a big turbo or a built engine that liked to 'blow out' the plugs. But, stock ignition is fine for a mostly stock car.


I miss my Cavalier, even if it made 100 hp on a cold day and had more suspension then it deserved.

Having run a full MSD system on my all-stock '88 Ramcharger (TBI 5.2L w/auto, 4WD) with a factory-stock plug-gap (.035") on Champion truck-plugs (Harder & more conductive core material), I can tell you the real gains had were a 20% gain in averaged fuel-mileage & "instantaneous" starting. (Barely heard the starter fight the compression of the second cylinder in the sequence while cranking before she "caught") I'd gladly recommend it to anyone seeking such gains... Just make sure your charging-system is "up-to-snuff", as capacitive-discharge multi-strike ignition systems eat-up amperage. The beauty of running the stock plug-gap was it'd last 30k-mi. before

As for the coils: Alone, on the twin-tower DIS, they won't even work as well as they would with the "box". Why? Simple: The Twin-tower's ICM is designed with an internal "load-sensing/controlling" circuitry that limits the amount of current flow through the coil-primary circuit once it "senses" a certain amount of resistance/load in it... as a safety-precaution to protect the rest of the rather sensitive circuitry found in the ICM. The MSD coil's "quick-rise" design of it's primary windings works against the nature of this load-control, making the ICM to "Cut-back the juice" to the coils & causing them to not see the level of saturation they might otherwise. This reduces the secondary out--the part that makes spark--to being little to no better than standard-replacement coils. But, when used with the MSD system, the ICM's primary-control circuit acts as nothing more than a triggering-system for the MSD box, and the coils do see full & proper saturation.

Ironically, the Accel coils work with the ICM's nature & see an increased output. So my advice? Get the Accel coils... Unless you're willing to wait until you have all the parts to the MSD system, plug-wires included. (P.S.: Save money & get the 8-cyl. universal plug-wire set!)


Go beyond the "bolt-on".