(IGNITION) DLIDFIS installed! Small write-up and some questions
 

Last night, my buddy and I embarked on the path of direct fire.

It was a very painless process, taking about two hours to complete, including a trip to my apartment to get some nuts for the ignition coils.

Because I have a '79, and had already swapped in an '81 distributor, I had a custom harness for the ignitors that I reused for the dual leading ignitors. Plug and play. For the coils, my dad and I manufactured a mounting bracket out of aluminium that mounts to the strut tower, so wiring up the coils was a snap. I mounted the ignitor plate where the coils used to be and got rid of a boatload of useless wires left over from the old ballast resistors. For the trailing, I made a new set of wires and incorporated the bullet plug from the dizzy. I followed the basic diagram on Jeff20B's site, and it worked quite fine for me. Having a wiring diagram is very usefull as well.

After we were done, I hit the key and she fired right up. There was a small difference in the sound of the motor, and my butt dyno thinks that there is a little more power. The only snag is the idle. Before the conversion, my idle fluctuated a bit, and now it fluctuates quite a bit more. I would suppose it's a vaccuum leak, so I'll have to track that down.

I am also wondering how those of you that have done this conversion have worked out how to get the connectors from the leading ignitors to stay in the leading magnetic trigger securely. There seems to be alot of slop in the plug, so I taped the connectors to it, but it's still flimsier than I would like. I used a medium U

All in all, I'm quite happy with the whole system so far, and I'll take some pics tonight of the setup.

Get a bad igniter, gut it and use that as a junction box. If you find the old connector for the sub zero assist, you can cut it off (leave enough wire to splice it into your new harness). That'll give you a connector that will fit in the top of the igniter.

Yes. Carl's method was used on my DLIDFIS setup, and also used Jeff20B's process. I plan on augmenting Jeff20B's write-up with our pictures/parts sometime in the not-too-distant future. Of course, I've been saying that for a few months now... :D

That's cool that you got it to work on your 7 rather painlessly. I personally haven't hooked up a 7 yet, as all my vehicles are pre-RX-7, or previously piston powered, so I can't give any specific details about them.

My REPU was similar to a '79 car because I too upgraded from points to an FB dizzy before taking the direct fire plunge.

Two things to help you out. First, you might want to hook up a relay to feed your coils and ignitors from the battery directly, instead of having to torture the stock ignition switch wires with all the extra, uh juice. :) It also reduces voltage drop to everything. It also elliminated a blip at idle that I used to get from time to time. Second, I've found the little quick disconnects from car stereo shops make great connectors for the pickup tabs on the back of the ignitors. Tweeters typically use this size. They're too tight, so I tweak them open with a small screwdriver before use. For the pickups themselves, I've also used a dead ignitor that's been jumpered inside.I've also had good results with filed-down male quick disconect tabs. They're a little thick so they won't fall out. So far so good.

RMD's writeup was pretty good because it had lots of 7-specific info. I'm sure pratch's writeup will be good too. Now start typin'! :)

When you get the ignitors from the junkyard, grab the dizzy's red and green wires too.

I'm fairly clueless when it comes to this electrical stuff, I do well with good directions and the factory diagram, but I'm a little hazy on what's required to wire up a relay to the battery. Could you elaborate? :D

I followed your advice and got the quick disconnects for the ignitors, and they worked quite well for both the back plugs and the top plugs. I am using fairly small spade connectors for the trigger, so I guess I'll take those off and try a larger connector.

So far, the car is running good, and I think that it's more powerful throughout. Not outstandingly so, but just enough to notice. Next on the list, finally installing my '81 rear axle and getting rid of my emissions so I can install my RB header.

As promised, here are the pics of my install. I re-did some of the connections, cleaned up some of the old wires and put some blue loom onto the major wires. I realized that I forgot to wire in the condensor on the dizzy to the trailing ignition, so I did that, and my idle was noticeably improved.

Thanks to Jeff20B for his thoughts and write up. Hopefully between his original write-up, RMD's write up, and my modest contribution, anyone can do the DLIDFIS conversion without incident.

http://members.shaw.ca/deuteronomy/engine%20bay.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/deuteronomy/coil%20bracket.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/deuteronomy/ignitor%20plate.jpg

http://members.shaw.ca/deuteronomy/dizzy.jpg

That's really cool!

Ok, about the relay. It only has four tabs. One goes to ground. One goes to the key switch. The other two are straight through. They bridge the gap between the battery and the ignitors and coils and can handle 30 amps or whatever the rating is.

Do you think it would be wise to put a fuse or fuseable link between the battery and the relay and if so what size would be appropriate?

Oh... and is there any reason why you couldn't power both the leading and trailing coils with the relay?

Use a 20 amp fuse or anything that won't get blown by normal use. All a fuse does is protect the battery incase the wire falls off and shorts to ground or anything else that could happen to cause a short.

All my ignition components are fed with a relay. Ignitors, coils, T and L, everything.

Just a followup to this thread, my setup has a couple of thousand miles on it now, and it still works great. The ignitors barely got hot to the touch in the summer, and now that we've descended to below freezing temperatures, they don't even warm up. My car starts right up in the cold, much better than it did last winter, and it is easier to drive when not fully warmed up. (Slowly and light on the throttle of course!) All in all, I'm very pleased with this mod, it has produced some real and appreciable gains.

Just a quick question guys. I have someone who can install a DLIDFIS setup in my car. Is that a good idea for a daily driver that I'm building for reliability?

My car is my daily driver and it has given me ZERO problems in the last three months. It drives better no the street and on the autocross course because of this mod. I really can't praise it enough.

There are no known disadvantages to a DLIDFIS setup under any condition in my opinion. Especially for a street car because it improves low/mid range RPM flexibility of the engine, not to mention it also shines at the top end.

Slightly off topic...

Would you need DFLIDS (or whatever)

If you are running two seperate MSD 6AL Boxes
and two MSD Blaster 2 Coils?

I am curious, as I am finishing my ignition now.

I think you should make a Step by Step Tutorial in how to do this for those that have a bloody clue about rx7 like my self. LOL!

Courtesy of Jeff20B -

http://www.geocities.com/cd23c/dlidfis.html

Haha nice Thanks

im not good with the whole elctronics part of cars, even with the turorial i am still a bit confused...o well looks like i will have to do some research..like i see 3 coils but only 2 ignitors??? just stuff like..mayby im just dumb but i read the tutorial and it still doesnt make total sense to me

and where is the trailing ignitor mounted?

the trailing stays on the dizzy where it was before

Now that I have access to a digital camera, I think I'll take a few pics for the noobs. :)

Not to say that I am a total noob but....I do love pics on tutiorials. But I am a visual (and even then kinda stupid) person.

Well, I know TheLatinHeat is interested in some more info. I'll get some pics of my white REPU's setup. Then if there's time, I'll shoot some of my other projects.

ok well i think i am starting to get it i took like 3 hours today and figured out the whole process... the only thing i dont understand is where the wires from the leading ignitors go? do they go in the spot where the single one was mounted on the dizzy before? if so then i should have it figured out :D

p.s. are the j109 ignitors just the stock ignitors or do you have to get them from a part store or a junk yard?

This diagram may help.

https://www.rx7club.com/forum/attach...chmentid=72295

Legend:
1 battery
2 ignition switch
3 Leading coils
4 Leading ignitors
5 Leading magnetic pickup inside distributor
6 Trailing coil
7 Trailing ignitor
8 Trailing magnetic pickup inside distributor

stock ignitors. leading and trailing are the same.

The J-109 ignitors are stock on '81-'85 1st gens. You could get a couple from the junkyard if you want to. Or you could try your luck with GM HEI ignitors. Check out this thread that Tulsa made. He used the text from my article and made a new diagram (the ground schematics look funny, but at least he got the G=green and W=red pickup wire polarity correct). http://www.needfulthings.net/cgi-bin...ST;f=77;t=1511 LOL, LP1 instead of L1? Anyway, enjoy.

By the way at the bottom of the his thread, there are a couple pics of the rotary B2000 I upgraded last year with three HEI ignitors.

I'm going to start taking pictures now...

ok well i believe i have it all figured out now haha took me long enough but i do have it, i also have a question i have the stock ignition right now but it wont start.. i do have power to both the coils but my leading coil wont give a spark.. therefor i have no spark to my bottom two spark plugs, this would mean my leading ignitor is toast right? either that or my dizzy rotor is toast also....should i replace both?

It sounds like you need to a do a little troubleshooting before taking on the direct fire mod.

Before you give up on the ignitor, there is a better way to test if it can still trigger your coil. Pull one of the spark plug wires off of the cap and hook it directly to the coil. Then plug the other end onto a spark plug and let it spark into the air (be sure the outer metal shell of the plug is grounded somehow). Then crank the engine and see if the plug has sparks (again, make sure it's grounded well).

If your ignitor truely is dead, you can pry the aluminum cover off the back, remove all the clear sealant stuff as well as any components on the aluminum cover that may contact the jumper wires, and solder the two jumper wires to the tabs.

Here is a dead one I gutted a couple days ago.
https://www.rx7club.com/forum/attach...chmentid=71855

so there is nothing to go wrong with the ignitors other then one of the wires coming off?

I almost gutted a good ignitor once. It was still sitting on a dizzy and had a tweaked connector on top. When I hooked up the B, C and ground wires and spun the dizzy shaft, nothing happened. I unscrewed it and set it next to a known dead ignitor. Right before I was about to pry the back off, something possesed me to retest the ignitor. Maybe it was from noticing that the screws were a little rusty around the washers where they contact the brass sleeves, or maybe it was the spirit of J-109 that spoke to me. LOL, whatever it was, I retested the ignitor, and sure enough, it wasn't dead. I straightened the connector and set it in my known good pile.

Man that would have sucked if I had gutted a good ignitor. Let this be a lesson to everyone. The ignitors ground through the brass sleeves in the screw holes. The ground travels from the circuit boards inside the ignitor to the aluminum backing plate. Since the outside of the plate is supposed to be covered with heat sink compound, its electrical transfer abilities are probably pretty low. Therefore, the brass sleeves transfer the ground up into the flat washers of the two screws which hold the ignitors to the dizzy housing, and then down the screws into the dizzy housing itself. Since mine had rusty flat washers, the ignitor's ground was lost. Perhaps this is why I got the dizzy for free? It only had one ignitor on it, but it was free, and the ignitor was not even dead!! Incidentally, the threaded section of both screws was still a normal cadmium color. Only the parts exposed to the elements were rusty.

Sure. You can custom fit tweater connectors to the pins on the back of the ignitors. They are usually made for thin tweeter connectors. The ignitor connectors are a little thicker, so I tend to open them up a little with a tiny screwdriver and test fit them untill they're snug. I haven't had a connector fall off an ignitor in all the years I've been doing this.

As for the tops of the ignitors with their T shaped connectors, you can just use standard femal quick discconects in the popular uh medium size (sorry, I don't know what that size is called, but it;s the most commonly used size and can be found at any auto parts store/Radio Shack etc).

I'm going to try to get a picture of the tweeter connectors.

Here are some pics.

1) Left, typical ignitor plate for DLIDFIS. On right, a single ignitor for a custom ignition system I'm working on.

2) The backside of the ignitor plates.

3) Closeup of DLIDFIS ignitor plate. This was once in my 13B powered GLC and fit in the stock external voltage regulator location. It worked great.

4) Closeup of the heat sink Compound from Radio Shack.

5) Tweeter connectors that have been opened slightly to better fit the pickup pins. I usually push them on as deep as in this picture. I've never had one fall off, yet they're still possible to remove with limited working space. It's good to find a balance of snugness. :)

More pics coming...

6) Bench testing some Mopar ignition modules. The MSD, Mazda ignitors and dizzy are only in this picture for the sake of human interest.

7) Vice Grips or other locking pliers are great to ground spark plugs. They only need to be tight enough to gently hold the spark plugs. Then use aligator clips or whatever to electrically ground it to your power source. I tested four sets of spark plugs in no time at all.

I took some more pics of the DLIDFIS installs in some of my rotary vehicles. Should I post them in this thread? Or start a new one? None are in any RX-7s so it's not exactly 1st gen stuff (even though the ignition parts are), and since this is the 1st gen section, I'm not sure what to do. Not many people look in the Other Rotaries subforum.

just post em.. who cares its a dlidfis thread isnt it??

and for junkyard hunting where can i get the j-109 ignitors and a coil that will work, does it have to be off an rx7 or is there anyother vehicles that will have them?

Jeff20B - you got 2 different size igniters in pic #6. Are some j109 and some j105?

I'm not sure of any other vehicles that use J-109s, but there have got to be some. I think the early '80s 626 uses J-105. As for the coils, Hanshin is a typical one that you'll find here and there in non-RX-7 Mazdas that can be used with J-109 ignitors. My '78 GLC even had one and a huge electronic ignition module. The coil simply needs to say USE WITH TRANSISTOR IGNITION and not USE WITH BALLAST RESISTOR. The ballast resistor type are for points ignitions.

slashdawg, yes!

This may help those who cant follow a diagram. THANKS TO JEFF and RHINOR61 for the ideas. I used colored wires to easily identify the positive and negative wires. There are 2 wires coming out from the dizzy to the igniters. RED = NEGATIVE & GREEN=POSITIVE (located in the last picture). I followed that color code across the board. Sorry about the quality of pix. This is a early morning rush job.

1. You will need to gut a NO-GOOD igniter and solder a 2 jumper wires as indicated in the picture. This will allow easy install. The wires coming out from the top connects directly to the igniters (picture #2).

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member...9_171_full.jpg

2. Now, you will need a plate to mount the 2 igniters and wired just like this. Unless you have a better idea. The two sets of green/red wires goes to the 2 leading coils. Again, green is (+) and red is (-)

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member...9_169_full.jpg

3. This is your new DLIDFIS
http://memimage.cardomain.net/member...9_172_full.jpg

http://memimage.cardomain.net/member...9_170_full.jpg

FYI: Be sure to solder every wires. its best to use T-Connectors, but for illustration purposes, I used female connectors.

wackyracer, thanks for the pics and instructions. this is finally making sense to me. I did the 2nd gen coil leading mod. It was really easy to do, and getting the leading coil was as simple as a trip to the boneyard. I never find igniters in the 1st gens in the boneyard here. I think I now understand how to wire this up. Except I will probably do it with the HEI igniters unless I get lucky and stumble on some good (and one not-good) J-109s.

ill take this as a yes? lol

Ack! On pic #3 you killed a pickup by removing its wire! I've never needed to cut any in all my ignition experiments.

I also noticed that your wires apear to switch positions. When looking at the back of an ignitor, the green wire is on the right. Then I see on the top of your ignitors, the green switches over to the left. I made sure to keep my wires in the same positions. All this requires is to have one jumper wire cross over the other wire inside the ignitor (which isn't a problem since they don't touch). Then at a later date, all I have to do is see how the colored wires enter the back of the ignitor and build a new harness according to the observed polarity. It's basically idiot-proof, which is good for me because I like to fit the aluminum backing plates back onto the ignitors and not have to remove them again or pull out the continuity tester etc.

Just some observations. :)

As long as you can find some quick disconnects in this size.
https://www.rx7club.com/forum/attach...chmentid=72304

The next five pictures. Captions are coming soon.

Another five pictures.

The last few pics for now.

Maybe I missed something ... what's the relay for? Pictures 1 and 2 a couple posts up.

[QUOTE=Jeff20B]

1. On pic #3 you killed a pickup by removing its wire! I've never needed to cut any in all my ignition experiments.
-----
It came from a bad dizzy.

2. I also noticed that your wires apear to switch positions. When looking at the back of an ignitor, the green wire is on the right. Then I see on the top of your ignitors, the green switches over to the left.

-----
http://memimage.cardomain.net/member...9_173_full.jpg


If you are to install a MSD 6A/6AL, the wires are connected to dizzy's as follows:
MSD violet (+) = dizzy green
MSD green (-) = dizzy red

Now, with the gutted t-stat. it doesnt really matter where it goes as long as you get the right connection. Trust me, the VOM beeps when you test for continuity between the two green OR two red wires. just noticed that conections between yours and John's (RHINO) gutted igniters are different too.

Wires between top of igniter to coil-
if you look at the stock connector, the one on the right (orig color is Yellow/blue or Yellow/green) connects to the coil's negative terminal.
***I used red wire to make it uniform with the dizzy's wiring.

Usually, I solder new wires from the dizzy to the DLDIFS package. But I have been busy lately, so here I go. I got 3 more cars to do tomorrow morning.

Sorry, this is a kinda last minute reply before I go to lunch. Im just going from my old memory.