So recently I have built my car with a pretty large part list and I have an electrical gremlin that im hoping someone can help me diagnose.

For those of you who don't know my car here is the quick list.

BR Race front mount with pipes
BR HTA 35R w/ header
Built 2.0
Ported race head
1000 cc injectors
smc alky 100%
BR tb exhaust w/ magnaflow rear section
AEM engine management
Hks dli 2

I can go on and on but you get the point. So my car made a little over 500whp on 29psi w/ 93 & alky before the head or built engine. At that time I had no issues.

This past month I added the aem, built 2.0, and ported head. My car hit the dyno a few weeks ago and was fine...but developed an oil leak....it turned out my oil pump had some serious issues and I needed to have it replaced.

Fast forward until today and on the dyno my car is having A MAJOR MISFIRE at around 5,000 rpms. Here is the electrical issue...my interior light is blinking as well as my whole guage cluster...it's like a faint pulsing in the lights.

I checked the following:
ground is fine
battery is 14 volts
plugs are new and gapped fine
we switched out my aem to make sure its fine
switched out my hks dli 2 to make sure its fine
switched my stock coil packs and their fine
all fuses are fine and showing proper voltage

The car shows an erratic drop of 1 volt on the rollers...it will jump erratically from 13.5 to almost 15 and back down when the car is starting to hit boost. But it does this light pulsating thing even at idle.

Does anyone think this could be my alternator?

PLEASE ANY HELP IS SUPER APPRECIATED. The car has gone into the low 500whp area while trying to tune it with moderate boost but I can't finalize the tune with this misfire or electrical issue. We even tried to change the dwell timing but I really think this is an electrical issue that is non aem related.

 

Well not that I expect anyone to be around at 8:45 on a saturday night...
but I pm'd David Buschur and AL from Dynoflash as well.

I trust them both and was hoping they could add some insight.

Hell, im an old man these days and I just gave my three month old daughter a bath. 9pm on a Saturday night is pretty late for me these days when the little one's bed time is over due.

 

could it be the tach. shorting out? i think your best best is to bring it to somebody that knows the entire electrical system and has a diagram.. they can pin point any bugs..it just could be a wide range of things i would think

 

Well the wide range of things is right for sure. Its funny how this just started out of nowhere.
The only electrical in my car not stock is my smc alky kit, aem wideband, stewart warner boost gauge, and greddy profec b, and i tied in most of these to the wire going to my cigerate lighter years ago. I haven't touched anything wire related and the aem is plug and play for the most part.

Also, as stated above all my grounds in the main engine harness are tightened.

 

might be tooo much load for the alt

 

Sounds like the voltage regulator is starting to fail. The pulsing lights & 15 volts are indicators that the regulator is not keeping the voltage "smooth"

 

To me, it sounds like you might have a bad ground somewhere. I would check all your grounds again and make sure the the gauge of the wiring for the grounds isn't a smaller gauge for the power of it. I am no electrical professional but I have come into problems on other cars in the past and grounding was the problem in most of the cases.

 

that sounds wack. look forward to seeing those new numbers though.

 

Voltage regulator in the Alternator... swap it out for a known working one and check...

-E

 

Check the alternator out. Take it to autozone and have ot tested. Also check the wiring on the starter solinoid, and alternator. If this isnt the cause than pm me, I have a few other things.

 

Check the alternator out. Take it to autozone and have ot tested. Also check the wiring on the starter solinoid, and alternator. If this isnt the cause than pm me, I have a few other things.


Im here 130 am, not drunk, just busy working.

 

Often these little bugs can be nuisances

I am sure you are in very competatnt hands with Dejon, however if he would like a second set of eyes I am happy to come up there tommorrow and take a look over the situation

Incidentally, we have the same condition which suddently apperared on the BAD BISH recently. I have not had the time to track down the cause yet. I have been very busy on customer cars and the Pinks All out race last week and have not had time to address it yet. That car ran fine for about 6 months and then one day - bamm - it picked up a miss fire. Obviously not a tuning issue.

I attribute a lot of this kind of miss fire and break up problem to AEM issues.

I have had a lot of boxes I needed to send back for warranty and repair - to AEM 's credit they are very good on service and warranty.

Anyway let me know if you need my help, I am willing to lend what ever assitance I can free of charge to this situation.

 

This is very easy to verify with a AEM data log of the battery volatge on the box

 

Thanks Al.

Dan used the aem to see the battery voltage and that's how we saw it spiking and diping eratically through out the dyno run...this is why he was suggesting the alternator swap. I agree with him 100% but I also told him I would post up here just to see if anyone had any other ideas to save us time.

You know how I feel about Pruven....good hands is an understatement. I just wanted to see opinions to help us figure this all out. Thanks for the offer btw...I need to talk to Dan Monday morning and see what he wants to do for the next step.

 

is the battery light faintly on aswell? I agree with everyone else, rebuild the alternator.