Sam: Sounds good. I think I am7 hours ahead (1 hr later than England). Are you the same as central time or eastern. You are 7 hours different if central, 6 hours if eastern. This is based on if Canada does daylight savings. I think you probably do. Anytime morning or early afternoon your time would work for me.

Dean: Yeah. The trailing isn't much help at this point. You can separate the 2nd gen trailing pack and just use one of its coils and fire through the distributor. However, that way is probably about equivalent to our stock coil or maybe less. The trailing doesn't make much difference anyhow. You can throw a MSD blaster 2 coil or similar if you do want to upgrade it. In the future, I may add trailing ignition to the TT. The main problem is you need a way to tell engine position in order to do the trailing (add a sensor to the main pulley).

 

Well ... me and Kent we up this morning trouble shooting my board, after about and hour we figured out it was my NAND IC that was fried. After changing it today I went back out there to see what would happen. For start I wanted to check if it was now sparking ... sure it enough it now is. Second thing that I wanted to jump to was seeing if it was advancing or retarding. Also good news there ... it looked like the pulley marks were actually going towards the passenger side as I gave it more gas. And from that and also from my last post we know that we can now see the marks on the pulley without pulling it a teeth, it still needs to be advanced but I would assume its about the same amount as before with the old TT. Lastly reving the engine at about 2K and holding there for a couple of minutes the TT did not get hot. I haven't had a chance yet to do road testing ... But maybe I'll be able to do so tomorrow.

Hopefully everything will be alright tomorrow. I just need a few longer wires to hook thing up and I should be golden.

Kent: Remember how I told you about the boucy voltage running thing off of the coil. Well I'm going to avoid doing that because it still did that today with just the igniter connected to coil. Would it hurt to have the Igniter and the TT hooked up straight to the battery at all times? Any other recommendations? I will try to hook it up from there with disconnecting the coil and see if that does anything. i'll let you know what ever happens tomorrow.

 

Sounds cool. Did you notice bouncing of the timing marks? Anyway, I will get with you tomorrow, and we can get this all tested. Pretty much any time tomorrow is good for me.

I spoke with Sam, and he said the voltmeter fluctuations were large (like the voltmeter is cutting out). Since Sam has this temp installed at the moment, maybe once the coil is bolted down with good grounds, that will clear it up. The other option is to run off the battery using a relay triggered by a switched 12v source. The relay is probably a good option anyway to make sure the coil gets all the juice it needs. The amount of wire is less, the wire is not 20+ years old, and you could go with a heavier gauge.

Sounds like we are making good progress. Once we know it works well in the car, I will order the remaining parts and get these shipped.

Kent

 

Yes!!!! Close To Ship Time!!!!!!

Me So Happy!

 

Kent: As far the bouncy on the timing mark I have noticed that a bit ... you can usually hear the engine almost stumble sometimes ... but I remember i had that before and all i basically had to do is crank the idle adjust crew a few turns ... with the TT in place it idles lower with the same setting. Also i didn't mention this to you over the email but the bouncyness of the voltmeter does reduce the higher up the revs I go.

 

I reckon the voltmeter bouncing could just be to do with poor connections between the battery and the voltmeter gauge. I havent experienced this however am going to replace wiring to my fuse box from the fusible links to ensure minimal current loss.

 

Glad to hear you guys are making progress. I finally got my system running again just in time for my last AutoX event this past Saturday. Running on the stock ignition system totally sucked, so its good to have my TT back and running again. Here's a shot of the heatsink I added. I have no idea if it will help matters or not because I'm still not sure if it is the ignitor or the coils that fried on my last coil pack.

 

well I did some testing on the car yesterday , and got to drive it around. At first I forgot to advance the ignition i just installed every thing and hopped in for a quick tesdrive, i thought that was going to be my last drive... driving around around, everything around 2k rpm seemed fine .. anything under was like crazy ... WHen i said i though it was almost my last what happened was I somehow lost brake (I think that the brake booster went on me I don't know how but that has never happened beforeand I was downhill on the twisties and had a car coming from the other side so I was doing like 100kph on a twisties that had a speed limit of 40 and going downhill only ment more speed. Good thing these cars are made for the twisties.) btw, the car stalled, and I couldn't turn it back ontill the next stop light. Which I almost went through. Anyhow, looking around the engine bay after the safe place to stop at, I looked at the distributor and noticed that I didn't advance the timing. After I advanced it, everything ran that much better. It would idle great run great, but had a little diffuclty which i think my be related to my carb and not the trick fom the sound of it but its awkward that it runs better without the TT. Anyhow, the engine stumble if I accelerate quickly, or if it decelerates quickly. Acceleration is improved, I noticed that when I actually first hopped in, dropping the clutch from only 3k I got tire spining as if I was dropping from like 5 before. So i know that its giving that little much more power. It would be great to have someone testing this with a good know working carb. I'm not doing any more work on this one cause i'm suppose to get a holley coming in the mail soon.

Kent: Quick summary, things seem to be going just fine now (besides those 2 little prob) If you can ship one out with all the mods that I've done to someone else to test on their car It would be great.

As far as the voltmeter thing goes, I hooked it up yesterday with disonnecting the coil pack and not in conjection with it, but running the wire from the lead that was going to the positive side only, and things ran great like that without any bouncyness, so it might of been the coil actually sparking on something.

Most importantly ... driving the TT yesterday for about a good 10minutes, low speed and highspeed testing, and coming back home, the coil only got a little warm. Nothing serious, I'm Pretty sure that normal though.

 

Sounds pretty good, Sam. Does the timing marks still jump around a bit? Perhaps R3 should be reduced. We could also go a bit bigger on R2. This would help low RPM operation, especially. For R2, I picked up 27k, 30k, 33k, and 39k (place was out of 36k). Perhaps bumping it up to 30k or so would help performance and not too much heat to the coil pack.

Anyway, is anyone up for doing a bit of testing? I suppose Paul/Rob would be good canidates if they have the time. If someone else is interested in doing some testing, I can send you a board with the current mods done. You may have to solder/unsolder R2 and R3 and try some different values to see what works best. I can include a selection of resistors that I think may work.

Kent

 

Hey Kent,

No there wasn't any jumping around at the timing marks now. Everything seemed stable, All the jumpiness seemed to have cleared out since I disconnected the coil. Now as you have mentioned before though, It does seem like that having the stock coil connected does something to the timing, because I think it has moved the position of the timing mark when I last saw it.

 

Hey Kent, I would love to test but will probably be short on time for the next month to month and a half - I will see what I can do. If I did find time, would I follow those instructions you had a few posts back on the forum? Are there any updates to these?

If I keep the instructions at hand, when I get a moment I will try to do some testing :-)

Cheers,

Paul.

 

Paul: I undestand. If you and Rob do have time to test, that would be great. The moe testing, the better. Basically, as it stands, the mods are the same as those posted a couple pages up. Currently, we are using:
- 27k for R2 (may increase to 30k)
- 5.6k fo R3 (may decrease or leave the same)
- Sam is running a 0.33uF cap across the power input
- additional ground at Vreg
- diode inline with 12v line
- diode between input and output of Vreg
- may add 0.1uF caps across the power at each IC (not sure if Sam added these or not)

I think that is it. If anyone else would like to test, let me know and I will get your board sent out. It would really help us out if someone can. I can test on the bench, but it is performance in the car that counts.

It sounds like the bugs are basically worked out. Just need someone else to help make sure and to fine tune the values of R2 (performance vs. coil heat) and possibly R3.

Kent

 

Hey kent:

Just a few Clarifications:
-R2 on mine is actually set at 56k and not 27k
-I do have 0.1uf Capacitors across the IC's

I will try to play around with the R2 and R3 values to see what works best, the thing that sucks is that I now have to do my testing outside of home so anytime i need to change something I will have to come back home and do it again. I will try to decrease R3 and R2 and see what happens.

 

Okay. Good to know. The 56k will be fine as long as the coil pack doesn't get too hot. I am not sure what value is ideal. Just from testing on the bench, it looks like 27k or 30k will saturate the coil still (full charge) and should run cooler than with the 56k. We will just need to experiment to see what works best.

It sounds like the 5.6k works pretty well for R3. We can reduce to say 4.7k or 3.3k, maybe. On the very first few TT circuits, I used 1k for R3. Seemed to work okay.

 

Kent,
Good work chasing this down. I built the simple circuit but haven't hooked it up yet. As I understand it, even the simple circuit will exhibit these heating issues.

When the dust settles can you post a modified diagram or description to the simple TT thread so those of us that built our own can fix em' up ?

Again, thanks for all the hard worked.

Tim

 

Thanks, Tim. It has been a bit tricky. Couldn't have done it without the help of Sam, Paul, Rob and everyone that put in ideas. I hope everything is cool with the circuit now and only need to do some fine tuning. I will likely do another batch of circuits when I retun to the US with all of these mods incorporated.

Anyway, I can post the final diagram in the simple TT write-up. Perhaps if I can get the parts, I can do a handbuilt version of this circuit along with a write-up. The problem is that the circuit is no longer so simple. It will require all of the same parts and connections as the boards that I am shipping. It is certainly possible to do by hand, but will require quite a bit of patience (lots of connections). Perhaps I can offer just a blank board on the next batch as an option for those who what to supply their own parts.

Kent

 

sounds like its getting close to getting completed. Cant wait to put this on my car. it needs it.

 

I can do some testing if you need more people

 

Hey kent,

I was just htinking if you actually need any help building these before shipping I can help you with that providing that you send me a batch of blank boards, and I can talk to my local supplier here to see what exact prices I can do and then I could ship them from my house to members on here to take a load off your shoulders. For anyone doing this mod, I recommemd putting all the capacitors on the solder part of the boards, I think this is the easiest and neatest way of doing things .all the diodes can go ontop .. I will try to take a pictures of how i've done things for reference

Amyhow kent like i said if you nbeed anyhelp give me a shout on my PM or email and let me know k

 

I definetly want one of these. Sorry, i dont completely understand this **** just because I have not read it, but i just cant bring myself to doing it. It takes courage. However if someone can awnser this Question I will be satisfied.
How do I get 2gcdfis, what do I all need.. Thats all I want to know is the parts list, i can figure out how its done buy reading the threads but im havin a killer time with this ignition stuff.

 

Hi Rob,

The current details up until a week or 2 ago are here:
http://rx7.pw.cx/transistor_trick/

These have not been updated with the latest developments, as these have yet to be tested by a few people. Once testing proves satisfactory results, the parts list and guide will be updated Stay tuned, I think we will be getting there in the next month.

Paul.

 

Dom: That would be great. I will get you a board wired up and shipped in the next day or 2.

dj55b: Thanks for the offer. I will let you know if I need any assistance. I can get the parts fairly reasonably priced here (online company). Since I think we have this pretty well figured out, I will go ahead an order the caps and diodes and pick up an assortment of resistors. That way I should have the parts once Dom is ready to test. The shipments can begin once we know the design operates well.

Rob: Check out Paul's site. It has a pretty good summary of this stuff. I know this thread is giant and hard to follow. Basically for this ignition mod, you need the circuit and a 2nd gen leading coil. You can get the circuit through me (built or kit) or you can build your own based on the parts list and diagrams.

 

What is the estimated time of this getting done? I really want this mod... I already have an FC leading coil ready... I want 2 of the assembled kit

 

I don't have a real good estimate. It will take about 1 week or so for Dom to get the circuit (assuming no customs problems). From there, it just depends on how much time he has.

I have you down for 1 circuit, I believe. I will see if I can get you 2. Right now, the stock of circuits that I have may be already spoken for. Once these start shipping, I should have a better idea if other spots will become available. If not, I may have to do just 1 for you for now and I will do another batch in a few months (probably October since I will be back in the US then). I also have a few people on a waiting list in case spots open up.

 

Hey kent,

when you're ordering capacitor, I would try to stay away from the electrolitic for them... I just don't want to see any capacitor blowing away. I've went to college and I know how many people still put them in backward no matter how many pieces of paper they have infront of them telling them other wise they still do it. So just for everyone's safety .