Roundabout

iTrader: (8)

Heres a couple of pictures of what I have so far. The first one is how I had it before I knocked out the center part. The fan just sits in between the zip tie and the housing. I used a little jb stick weld to help direct the flow into the ignitor housing. The second picture is after I drilled out the center part and ground it down a little.

Kentetsu

Finally got my system finished, installed, and running. I'll try to post some pics later today...

Roundabout

iTrader: (8)

Where da pics at Kentetsu?
I just wanted to let you guys know that my setup is still working great after almost a month and about 1,200 miles.

gsl-se addict

iTrader: (3)

Good to hear that it is working well. Kentetsu posted the pics in the big TT thread.

https://www.rx7club.com/showpost.php...postcount=1007

Looks like it should cool well.

Kentetsu

Sorry guys, I'll post some pics in this thread when I get home tonight. System is still running great, and the heatsink is cool to the touch after just a few seconds after shutting down. I still haven't gotten the epoxy, so the heatsink is just wired on. I'll get some soon.

Kentetsu

Here are the shots. Once I separated the coil from the ignitor housing, I ground off two of the mounting posts on the housing to make room for the heatsink.

I considered cutting a hole right through the housing so that the heatsink could be placed right up against the back of the ignitor, but that would be quite a bit more work so I'll save it for later (if it turns out that it is needed).

For now I'm going to see if enough heat will pass through the ignitor housing to keep things healthy. The original design simply passes the ignitor heat to the housing, which serves as a type of make-shift heatsink itself, so the added heatsink should help to keep that part of the housing cool enough to allow the added heat to dissipate. Anyway, we'll see if it works out that way.

Really though, my car might not be the ideal candidate for this testing due to one fact; I have not yet had any issues running the TT system. At one point I thought that I had experienced a failure, but it turned out to be a mistake made be myself in the wiring of it. After trying two other coil packs (which I purchased thinking I needed them) I finally figured out where the problem was. So now I have three coil packs total, all of which are good... But hey, if nothing else I think it looks pretty high tech to have a heatsink under the hood of a 20+ year old car.

ratboy

iTrader: (1)

My ignitor lasted several months of daily driving before it finally (and suddenly) died. I have a new coil pack waiting for the updated TT but I may risk 20$ and put in the new pack after doing this mod. I does look pretty cool too...

Roundabout

iTrader: (8)

Well today I was sitting at a stop light on my way to Hackensack when my idle dropped from ~900 to ~500 rpms. The butt dyno also indicated a considerable drop in power after this also. I had problems with the TT before (page 1) and I am thinking that it may be the culprit again. The symptoms are the same, except for both the green and red indicators on the TT seem to be flickering when the engine is running and when I poke the wires coming out of it, there is no change.
Any toughts?

gsl-se addict

iTrader: (3)

Sounds like the 2nd gen pack may have died. First check spark on the leading to see if you have any. If you don't, unplug the TT from the J-109 and ground the yellow wire. The green LED should go out and the red LED should come on. Measure the voltage at the output (blue wire). It should be about 4.3v. If it is, the coil pack is probably dead (assuming wired correctly, has power, but no spark). If the TT output is 0v, the problem is in the box (shorted/broken trace, blue wire loose, etc.). Let me know what you find out and we will go from there.

Kent

BTW: Run these tests with the key ON, but the engine not running.

Roundabout

iTrader: (8)

Well I did exactly as you said and it looks like it is the coil. No leading spark and 4.3v on blue wire.

Roundabout

iTrader: (8)

It's been a while and I just wanted to let you guys know that I have it back up and running. It was after all a bad ignitor. My plans are to do something similar to what kentetsu did, but Im going to attach the heat sync to the ignitor inside the housing while still using the fan on the outside to provide air flow inside the ignitor housing. It may take me a few weeks, as money is tight and have been pretty busy, but I will in time keep you guys posted.
Thanks for reading,
Justin

edit: forgot to mention that I have a few videos up in the audio/visual section of some random spirited driving I did this evening.

gsl-se addict

iTrader: (3)

One thing you can do is add an additional ballast resistor to the 2nd gen pack. I have been looking for someone to try this. Any extra resistance will decrease current flow and heating of the pack. You can get a pair of 10w, 1 Ohm resistor at RadioShack for like $1.59. You could try putting one in series with the stock ballast resistor. The stock resistor is 0.35 Ohm. This would give a total of 1.35 Ohm ballast. The other option would be to put the two 1 Ohm resistors in parallel and then putting that in series with the stock one. This would give 0.85 Ohm of ballast.

I think this would be easy to do and should fix the issue. We just need to experiment to see what is the ideal resistance to drop the temperature enough, but not so much that it will hurt perfomance.

Kent

Roundabout

iTrader: (8)

I may have to try that. I'll write that down and pick some up while I'm in Duluth this weekend. The only problem is that my soldering Iron is a piece of junk (bought it at checker)....especially if Im soldering something as sensative as this. Do you know if radioshack sells those butane irons? Or where I can pick one up besides snapon?

82REX

iTrader: (1)

Sorry to jack the thread, but I was wondering what everyone thought of an idea I had yesterday: Seperate the ignitor and coil pack and attach the ignitor to the housing in front of the radiator? It would be in an area of high airflow so it might stay cool enough. Any thoughts to if it will work?

Kentetsu

I think the problem is, the most heat is generated at idle (is that right?).

As far as modifying the unit for the heatsink, I still think the best way would be to mount it where I did, but with a hole cut through the casing so that the heatsink is making direct contact against the ignitor. This would provide the best cooling, no doubt. Making it all fit together might be tough though. That is my plan if this one ever fails, but so far it seems to be working well. The heatsink gets pretty warm, but cools off very quickly so I guess its doing its job.

Which ignitor did you loose Roundabout? 1st gen or 2nd?

Kentetsu

Lost my leading ignition again on the way to work yesterday. Haven't done anything with it yet, but will have to address it today. Running late for a meeting at work, and was running about 90 or so on the back country roads (no traffic, just corn fields). I saw that one of the farms had some goats that had gotten out, so I pulled in to let them know (left the car idling for about a minute). When I got back in, something was definitely wrong...

I was really hoping that this heatsink mod would help with this, but apparently not. Or maybe it did help it live longer, just not indefinitely... Anyway, I'm going to replace the coil pack and rebuild the same setup I have now, then investigate the added resistor that Kent has been working on. But for now, I just have to get her running strong again for the race this weekend. I sure hope the local parts yard has a coil pack. I have a couple here, but not sure which are good or bad.

How can I tell if its the coil, or the ignitor that is bad? Maybe I can combine some parts...

The good news is, I'll get some photos of the wiring while I'm doing this to help others that want this mod. I've had some requests lately for pics, but I just haven't had the time to take care of that. Now I have no choice, so I'll kill a couple of birds with one stone.

Kentetsu

Okay, here are some pictures of the wiring setup. I would like for Kent to look this over and give it his blessing before too many people use it as a reference though. I don't want to propogate any incorrect information here...

Everything is pretty much self explainatory. You see the color and position of wires on the ignitor, and the color of the wire from the TT unit (or other source). There is also a shot of the location where I tapped in for power.

Kentetsu

More...

Kentetsu

One more thing to mention here. Before my ignitor died this time (and yes, I verified that it was the ignitor and not the coil that died), it seemed to get weak. For about the last week and a half it has been breaking up when I got above 6200 rpms or so. The new ignitor has cured that issue, and the ignition is obviously much stronger now than before.

I don't remember if the one before this last one got "tired" before it died, but I'll definitely keep an eye out for that next time. I think I'll go ahead and find another coil pack so I'll have one ready to swap in next time. Kind of a pain to have to replace it every year, but well worth it so I don't mind too much.

We'll be racing at Grattan Raceway on Monday, so I'm kind of glad the ignitor died when it did. Now that I've replaced it, she's running like a raped ape. Good timing (no pun).

gsl-se addict

iTrader: (3)

Looks good to me. I will go over it a bit more tomorrow. I am on a slow connection now, so it takes some time to download each pic. Glad to hear you got it going again. I think adding a resistor like MattG is doing should really help the problem. We will see what he comes up with.