Looking to upgrade the ignition system on my IX I was set on just buying Montero coils and new plug wires. I was all set to pull the trigger on the deal when I decided to bite the bullet and bought a Spark Tech Pro CDI 12 System instead.


Yesterday, after a couple of errands I pulled the car into my garage and installed the kit (easy as pie by the way, this truly is a plug-n-play kit)


The car fired right up as usual and tru to everyone's reviews, overall drivability on my heavily mod'd IX is better. Some of the minor irritations with big injector hiccup, part-throttle stutter etc are either non-existent or outright gone.


Fast-Forward to this morning and the new kit's first 'cold start' and WTF - the car really didn't want to start. I cranked and cranked and cranked, finally after an injector-off WOT crank it finally started!


This isn't exactly what I expected out of this kit! The temperature here only dipped down into the low 40's last night! The car has always started reasonably well on the OEM coils- even during our coldest weather.


Has anyone else experienced these symptoms? Looking for suggestions on what to check and/or try to solve this dilemma.


mods
2.4 fpblack
S3
fic2150
ER speed density
e85
ETS mini battery


John-

 

I did read you will need to change your timing for the swap but I assumed it meant that you could increase it a little up top. maybe they meant everywhere?

 

Following up on this.. .

I called SparkTech support and they said to send it in for diagnosis,

looks like there were two issues involved on my cold start challenges.

1.) As I pulled the COP kit off of the car to package it up, this happened to the power wires to the CDI box:


2.) While the kit was at ST for repair, the temperature again dipped down into the low 30s, In the morning the car refused to start with the OEM ignition as well. Looks like my mini battery finally gave up the ghost. My guess is that with the battery going bad, the voltage dips down too low during cranking for the CDI box to fire. I scrapped the ETS mini battery kit, fired up my tig and fabb'd up a new battery tray - I went with a Miata D51R battery. Excellent upgrade for the mini-battery blues! and it fits just fine with my ETS short route IC pipe kit.

I've re-installed the COP kit and this morning (mid-30s) the car started fine.

John-

 

hows the d51r holding up? thinking about getting one for my evo, sits regularly and has a securisy system but i can trickle it if needed

 

Works great in my car! My first year storing the evo for winter killed the battery and I got it replaced, the second winter I disconnected the negative terminal and 4 months later I re-attached it and it started right up!

 

What plugs are you running with your Pro CDI?