[sburke]

MSD DIS-2 Install

How to install an MSD -DIS II module on a 96-02 Cavalier with the 2.4L engine.
Diagram of DIS IIMSD Tech Notes

In your installation manual you will be mostly dealing with the diagram on page 11, figure 11. To get to this on the car you must first remove the IDI cover on your motor (the part with 2.4L Twin Cam written on it).

Under that you will have a white ignition tower and a black and silver square looking module. Remove the tower from the IDI cover and you will see your coils. The wires between the square module "Power train control module" and your coils are the ones you will be cutting.

Just a suggestion....mark one of the white wires with a dot so you don't have to remember which one is which! I cut and soldered the wires, then covered them up with heat shrink tubing.
There is one brown wire which is your "ignition 12 volts", and 2 white wires which are your "triggers". What I did to tell them apart is to look at the bottom diagram on page 11, coming from your coil harness the far left wire is your brown wire "ignition 12 volts", the second wire over on both the diagram and the harness is your trigger 1, and the last one on the far right is your trigger 2.

You might have the cut part of the black piece that is on the white tower to feed all the wires out, but try to keep as much as possible because that keeps the wires from touching the control module, which gets extremely hot. Or you can drill a hole in the side of the white tower case, as I did in the picture above. Just be sure to feed the wires thru before you solder them!

Wiring
On the square module/plug side of the wires: Connect the 2 red MSD wires to the brown "ignition 12 volts" wire on the plug. Connect the white MSD wire to the middle white "trigger 1" wire. Connect the green MSD wire to the other white "trigger 2" wire.
On the coil side of the wires: Connect the 2 brown/orange MSD wires to the brown "coil (+)" wire going to the coils. Connect the brown/white MSD wire to the middle white "coil (-) trigger 1" wire. Connect the remaining brown/green MSD wire to the remaining white "coil (-) trigger 2" wire.
You have now completed the hardest part of the installation!
Completed towers
(shown with RK Sport spark boots installed)

If you want to change your spark plugs now is the time to do it since everything is all apart. If you are going to be running nitrous I would MOST DEFINITELY switch to a super copper plug, like NGK TR55, otherwise it is up to you.
All your have left to do is mount your DIS II box and to wire your pos and negative to the battery, and the theft deterrent and staging rev limiter if you decide to run them, otherwise cap them off and they will be fine.

Switch settings
N/A setup
SW1: S1-OFF, S2-OFF, S3-OFF, S4-ON, S5-OFF, S6-ON, S7-ON, S8-ON
SW2: ALL OFF
SW3: S1-ON, S2-OFF, S3-ON, S4-OFF, S5-ON, S6-OFF, S7-OFF, S8-OFF
Nitrous setups
2 degrees retard, for up to 50-hp shots
SW1: S1-OFF, S2-OFF, S3-OFF, S4-ON, S5-OFF, S6-ON, S7-ON, S8-ON
SW2: S1-OFF, S2-OFF, S3-OFF, S4-OFF, S5-OFF, S6-ON, S7-OFF, S8-OFF
SW3: S1-ON, S2-OFF, S3-ON, S4-OFF, S5-ON, S6-OFF, S7-OFF, S8-OFF
4 degrees retard, for 50-HP to 100-hp shots
SW1: S1-OFF, S2-OFF, S3-OFF, S4-ON, S5-OFF, S6-ON, S7-ON, S8-ON
SW2: S1-OFF, S2-OFF, S3-OFF, S4-OFF, S5-OFF, S6-OFF, S7-ON, S8-OFF
SW3: S1-ON, S2-OFF, S3-ON, S4-OFF, S5-ON, S6-OFF, S7-OFF, S8-OFF