Stock ECU and COP
 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...COPandMAFT.jpg

So like most of you I am a busy guy. I am busy doing lots of things, but one thing that always seems to fall by the way side is my own projects. This is especially compounded when it involves wiring no matter how simple. I have a really hard time with it and left it to some one with more experience. English Racing had my car doing my 5 speed swap (again time) and while it was there I convinced Lucas to throw this on. This is the 3rd of 3 prototypes that TTP had out last year. Scott cut me a heck of deal so I grabbed it.

Basically all it is 300m coils, a plate, some Lexus connectors, an MSD DIS2 (wasted spark) or you could use a DIS4 for true direct ignition I spose, and a 1G eclipse transistor to change the ignition from rising edge to falling edge or whatever the flip flop is. I am not the electrical engineer, that would be Paul :cool:

Anyway, this happened at the same time I put on the MAFT Pro and while there were some hesitation issues and part throttle bucking this ended up being the MAFT Pro. So far with the COP set up I have noticed:

Less knock because I am assuming it lights off and stays lit under high boost.

NO MISFIRES like I had been (spark blowout or whatever you want to call it)

and I have been able to open up the gap in the plugs as well, currently .028.

I dont think this adds power or anything like that, but it keeps you from having some of the issues I was having at the end of last season at high boost on racegas. Lucas will be testing the SparkTech COP set on his stock ECU before too long, so that should cover and solve the debate once and for all...least as far as I am concerned.

I am starting this thread for continuing discussion and hopefully to improve the breed so to speak. Anyone that is also running stock ECU COP is invited to participate as well as those with questions that I will be able to answer (obviously wiring is gonna be right out).

Discuss {thumbup} :D

We are running some stock mitsu coils with another unit on a friends car that will be hitting the dyno in a week. So far we are happy with it and it is a 250mj unit. Anyways inductive ignitions are great for stock cars. When you start pushing the limits in inductive systems you need more inductance........IE: a physically larger coil like on the DSM's.

The DSM's are falling edge and use an ignitor. The evo's are rising edge and have the ignitor built into the coil. You'll also notice the DSM coils are physically MUCH larger than the evo units and as an inductive system goes they are superior to the evo's.

The CDI boxes take the principles of inductance and throw them out the window. Up to a point what mostly matters is the turns ratio to make the most out of matching the CDI box to the coil. 100:1 is an average good turns ratio to shoot for. Too much turns and you get large voltage and too little current. Too small a turns ratio and you don't get enough voltage to "jump the gap" but the current is their. Apparently CDI boxes don't like charging up and not being able to jump the gap (aka misfire) as it can cause damage is "some" units I've heard rumored.

Not to piss in your cheerios but I rand a DIS-2 HO and fried it after a week. It was a horrible experience with MSD. Not only that but its just bad design that you can't configure it for rising edge or falling edge and have to run a DSM ignitor. Good luck with it, some fail, some don't.

I'd offer more comments on the ignition that I and my friend are testing out but would like to visit the dyno and get some more time with it before I really talk about it much.

Here is a log with the COP. It was a fifth gear pull just to load up the car as much as is possible and see what would happen. There was a little noise right as I let off, but as you will notice most of my issue was the speed on my closed test course required an immediate application of brakes.

No, not pissing in my cheerios at all. I only have experience with the older MSDs on domestics. This is my first usage of one of these boxes but I know what you are talking about as far as MSD's "reliability". I figure if I can get a year out of it I am doing well. I do like that I can configure an ignition based 2 step instead of the fuel cut and also do the same for the NLTS. Paul ran 2G coils on his car up to the high 40's I believe without any problem so that was a thought that had crossed my mind. I did this more as an experiment to see what COP does with the stock ECU.

What you have is no doubt 10x better than stock. That is how horrible the stock evo ignition is. I really like the DSM coil setup and for you it should be plug and play if your MSD fails since you already have the hard part done, the ignitor. I don't know what kind of wires Paul used but the NGK wire set from summit is $36. So cheap that I bought a spare set even though my 4 year old wires are holding up fine.

What you have is no doubt 10x better than stock. That is how horrible the stock evo ignition is. I really like the DSM coil setup and for you it should be plug and play if your MSD fails since you already have the hard part done, the ignitor. I don't know what kind of wires Paul used but the NGK wire set from summit is $36. So cheap that I bought a spare set even though my 4 year old wires are holding up fine.

Is there any value to going to using better coils while keeping the ignition inductive?

If you are misfiring more inductance and more turns ratio will help keep it from misfiring.

The good part about inductive ignitions is that the spark event is many times longer than a capacitive ignition. Basically most of the time the coil is discharging the plug is lit up.

This is also a bad thing though. Imagine under low load conditions. The plug lights up almost immediately after the igniter grounds the coil. Now as cylinder pressures rise (boost) the ignitor grounds the coil, the field collapses and voltage is applied to the spark plug. Well since we are at heavy boost the plug might not light off right away, it might take a few crank degrees before it actually is able to spark. Since the inductive spark is LONG it will usually fire when on the virge of misfiring, but it will fire late.

So what happens when you tune an ignition that is starting the push the limits of an inductive ignition? Well you tune it and accidentally give it too much advance because the ignition is artificially lagging on you. What happens if you tuned on a humid day where sparking was difficult and take the car out on a dry and it sparks 1-2 degrees SOONER than you tuned at? You get inconsistencies in your tune. The car just never seems to be happy day to day.

OEM's like inductive ignitions because they spark long so if the mixture doesen't light off right away it probably will after a few pico seconds because the spark event in an inductive ignition is so long. This makes for a smoother running engine.

Capacitive ignitions rely on a lot of secondary coil voltage to jump the plug gap. The spark is however very short. At high rpm's the spark is single fire and if it doesen't light off the mixture during the short spark, it never will (until the next power stroke). You'll feel these misfires. The good thing though is that you don't need a physically large coil with a lot of inductance, just a good turns ratio that matches the CDI box you are using.

You also need a good quality coil that can handle the 50K+ volts that your going to see on the secondary of a CDI. Don't want spark arching out of the coil to ground, or to someone working on the engine (ask me how I know).

CDI boxes usually get around rough low RPM operation with multispark so that if the mixture doesen't light off on the first attempt it should light off on the second 10-15 degrees later.

Interesting tech Danl...I knew there was a difference and even after reading the stuff that BradRS had posted I didnt quite grasp all of it. I am going to have to look at the specifics of this MSD, but as I recall the 6AL that I use on my BBC will drop spark for at least 10-15 degrees...not sure though.

The MSD's will do multispark at low rpm's. All CDI's that I'm aware of single fire at high rpm's. They do this because you can't physically charge the capacitor quick enough for another spark at high rpm's. I mean, you can spark it but you might be sparking at bottom dead center on the next power stroke. Unless your a fan of preignition (and who are we kidding we all like to see cranks/rods/pistons on the ground behind our cars) you really don't want to be doing this.

I really like the M&W boxes. Really nice stuff. Its more geared towards racers but I've always respected the aussie stuff.

MSD has left a sour taste in my mouth. After their DIS-2 caught my DSM on fire they wouldn't warranty the box or my coil packs that caught on fire or the wiring harness that was on fire. MSD really didn't give a **** about me and the fire they caused near my fuel return line. Ok, done ranting......

Yeah at the time I got this everyone thought the M&W wasnt compatible at all with the stock ECU. Knowing what I know now, I wish I had researched SparkTech a little more. When the DIS box dies I will probably go with an M&W in its place. I mean I am already half way to it now anyway.

It burnt down? You need to tell that story over on the "other"site I think. What of the other CDI boxes, or are they all pretty much the same? I ran a Jacobs or a Mallory WAY BACK IN THE DAY but I cant really remember which now. My only other experience has been with MSD...numerous hondas, my WRX (well that was coils only), and now this.

This is a great thread, as I am now running 29+psi on my car daily. I am planning on converting to E85, and the boost might go up a touch, but not much. I am running BPR8ES's now gapped to 0.022 to try and keep my blowout issues away. It started when I had a set of 7ES's in the car, gapped to 0.025 (Lower side of factory spec) and was getting bad blowout at 55-5750rpm. I changed to 8ES's gapped to 0.028 and still a little bit of blowout on a hard 5th gear passing highway pull. So, now I have them gapped to 0.022 in preparation for switching to E85...

Will there ever be a wiring diagram released (Maybe by PM?) for the DIYers? If ETS would sell all the parts individually, I would still buy through them...

Actually there was a wiring diagram from last year I just saw last night in the Advanced forum:

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/sh...d.php?t=205435

I am looking for the part numbers for the coils and clips right now as well. The other thing is that if you were to do this you'd need an MSD and as we have discussed they are known for having problems. Pricing it out, its really actually pretty close to buy the SparkTech and it is plug and play as far as I know.

Rough costs for this-

Coils 300M- $35 apiece (ACDELCO Part # C533 or AIRTEX Part # 5C1094)
Lexus coil clips-$15 apiece I think when I ordered them from Toyota
Aluminum plate- practically free plus your time finding fasteners and cutting it. Lets say $20
1G DSM ignitor- I couldnt find a new price, but I believe the part number is Lx-671
Then the MSD DIS, 2 choices here. Either run the DIS as wasted spark or the DIS 4 for individual timing control. Either way I would get the programmable one not the one with turn pots. #6212 is 551.80 from Summit or #62153 for the DIS4HO which is not programmable and 558.40

Total for this- 770 plus whatever the 1G ignitor is and freight. So lets say 800 plus freight.

Not bad, and dont get me wrong you might be able to do it for less but like I said if I had it to do over again I would have gone with the PnP SparkTech with the M&W for not much more.

http://www.sparktechignitions.net/store-COP.html

Ok, so I got some time in on the ignition. I'm running the Dynatek and am very pleased. I've put over 1000 miles on the unit and am very pleased with how it works. It is seamless, which is how a part like this should be. I can't say that driveability is better or anything like that. What I can say is that I can't tell its on the car *until* I run insane boost without any cutting out like before.

So the night before the dyno I turn it up to 30psi boost on 92 octane. Thats a good amount of boost, as much as I used to run on race gas, and the car loved it. I was afriad to run more boost so I waited till the dyno and spiked my pump gas with a dash of race gas. I went out and turned it up to 36 psi (not smart, I have to use 4th gear to set boost). Anyways I got a weird oscillation at 6000rpm's. Not a misfire, just a weird feeling from the motor at which point I lifted (thinking I might have a stock rod letting go). Pulled the plugs and noticed that my BPR8ES that I had been cold starting on all winter to move the car had the screw on electrode connector half the way off. Went onto the dyno with new plugs and could only get the boost up to 33psi tapering to 30psi to redline (8000rpm's). Car ran great, not a single hesitation and it was very knock resistant compared to my stock ignition. I would like to run more boost but my turbo isn't so happy with me anymore and seems to be letting off a little smoke last time I drove the car. :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJoWBMB1xCY

dan l,

Are you using the Dynatek ARC-2 with the montero coils? I had installed one months ago but kept getting really nasty misfires at cruise. It was fine at WOT.

One day while driving around town it totally freaked out and the car started backfiring and spitting fireballs at cruise down the street. I took it off and haven't thought about it since.

This is the setup I had:

http://www.norcalmotorsports.org/use...cdi/cdi_05.jpg