Ok guys, I built and installed the DLIDFIS ala Jeff 20B, yet my car seems to have done the exact opposite of what he said it would do. It runs like ****, wont drive, and when it does drive its slower than stock, it barely idles, backfires, etc. Ive checked and rechecked wires, polarity, soldered and resoldered joints, swapped ignitors, tried different wires, etc. I just cant get it to run right for anything. Before I did this, it would idle rock steady at 850-900 RPMs and run just fine, now it barely idles at 700 and doesnt drive for ****. I just dont know what to do now. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Im staying up and working on this till its fixed cause I have to drive it tomorrow, so any responses any time tonight or whatever would be appreciated. Thanks.

~T.J.

 

kick it and swear at it a bunch..... You have to scare it into submission... then it'll be your bitch and do what you say. Hope that helped.

 

well, seems liek a totally retarded suggestion but seem sliek your desperate so i though i would just throw it out there and double check to make sure ya have your trailing and leading sorted out accordingly.

 

Check your Trailing plug wires. I once reversed them accidentally while hooking up DLIDFIS. I pulled all the wires off the dizzy cap and reinstalled the T wires in the L positions wrong. It made the engine run very similar to what you described.

Also, double and triple check the green and red wires from the pickup to their Y connections, to the S and G tabs on the backs of the ignitors.

I've done four DLIDFIS installs and only botched something once (reversed T wires from the cap to the plugs).

 

Ok, I checked it all, the plug wires are right, and the polarity from the pickups all the way to the last leading ignitor is right. I checked it with a volt meter so I know its right. Its still running like crap. Im going to go try and see if I swap out the wire Im using for the pickups if that will help. Right now Im using Cat 3 network cable. 4 solid conductors with shield. Its just what I had laying around. I have no idea what else to try. Anyway, Ill be back with an update later...

~T.J.

 

I tried different wire from the pickups to the ignitors, and all it did was make it worse. I then reinstalled the origional wires that I had on there, resoldering all the connection and miraclesly it worked, so I assume I just had a bad solder joint or something, but at least it runs and works well now.

As I was driving home on the highway, a jerk in an SUV cut me off, so of couse I down shifted to third, and it definantly got to redline faster and I could tell a difference.

~T.J.

 

If you check your other thread, you will note I recommended exactly that - bad connection at the pick up - happened to me with my MSD set up when I first installed

 

That's cool that you got it to work.

I once considered cat5 or whatever I had laying around, but figured it wouldn't be robust enough. I used some other more automotive-ish wire (unshielded, of course) and it worked fine. I still haven't gone with microphone XLR cable or anything like that.

Two 14 or 16 guage (or thinner) wires zip-tied together has worked great for me so far. No signal probs.

 

As I said, the wire Im using is Cat 3 with 4 solid conductors and shielding, but its actually small 24 gauge wires, maybe I should upgrade it to something a little thicker later on? Is there really anything to be gained by it? I just dont have the heart to "rip apart" what I just fought with into the wee hours of the night just to replace a wire that may or may not make a difference, ya know?

~T.J.

 

Well, those cat3 wires are usually single strand and could fatigue and break rather easily from engine vibrations over time. The thickness probably wouldn't really be an issue as the signal from the pickups is pretty small. I've described it in the past as lopsided AC. If you hook an LED up to it and spin the dizzy, it'll flash the LED. The pickups are inductors, kinda like an alternator or generator, but were designed to have a slow rise and quick fall time to cause a heartbeat-like pulse to signal the ignitors to switch their power transistors quickly off to make the coils spark etc. Not that that info is of any help to you right now.

Anyway, just keep in mind that your wires could break some day. It just depends on a couple of factors such as the amount of movement the wires experience on a daily basis, you know, that sort of thing. Take one of the wires and bend it back and forth and see how long it takes to break them. That'll give you an idea.

Nice write-up for the RX-7, by the way. Since I don't have a 7, I wasn't able to include 7 specific info in my article. See if you can have it hosted somewhere online and point or link to it in your sig.