AEM IGN-1A Mercury Marine ignition coil info/install
 

I originally went with a HKS Twin Power like most people because of how easy it is to use and install plus there are a good amount of people going pretty far with them. Had I known about these and how simple it could be to put them in I would have gone this route from the beginning. I have a GT35R and at 17 psi with just water on wannaspeeds preturbo water injection set up I was getting ignition break up on the dyno. This was with the HKS, NGK 10.5x4, 8.5 magnacore wires. I really want 20 psi straight water and as much as the kit will deliver. I figure this will work from what I've read, we'll see........

So I'm still putting my car together but wanted to make this and post my progress as I make it. I didn't find all the info I was looking for on the forum so I'm hoping other people will help compile any useful info here so people have the info they need to decide if they are right for them.

First here's a shot of my working space and the coils themselves, it's my friend's garage that owns the red 2JZ FD there.

Harness
 

I bought everything from C. Ludwig here on the forum. I asked him if he could make me as close of a plug and play set up as possible and this is the harness I received. I'm extremely happy I had asked because this thing is way better than what I would have done on my own. Everything is labeled and all I needed to do was hook up 4 wires then power and ground. Here are pics of the harness itself.

How easy it really is to install
 

Here are the 4 wires you need to connect after cutting off the stock igniter plug. The 3 wires that I didn't use I just put tape over individually then shrink tubed together.

Wiring connections:

Stock New Ignition
Light Green Green/Black
Brown Green/Red
Brown/Black Green/Brown
Black/White Yellow

Soldered & shrink tubed
 

Seriously, this is pretty damn easy to hook up if you go the lazy route like me and purchase the harness to go with it. The black/white wire that connects to the yellow wire is thicker than the rest if you notice in the pictures, I don't personally know why.

The reason for that is because it in the 12V IN to the igniter. Chris is probably using that as a trigger for the relay.

But I only hooked up 4 wires, I thought these were all for the internal ignitors? I'm running power from the battery to the relay with an inline fuse.

Also, I was wondering about the 2 ground wires. The paperwork from AEM says to ground one to the engine and one to the battery. Can't I just ground both to the battery since both the engine and battery have grounds to the body of the car?

I am assuming you are using a pfc? If so there are only 3 coil trigger wires because the oem system has only 3 coils. You still need a switched 12 volt source to trigger the relay.

I think Chris may want you to ground one wire to each rotor housing. That is how Chris told me to wire mine up. However that may depend on how the wire harness was made up.

Nice to see some more info about these coils, where are you planning to mount them? Does Ludwig Motorsports offer mounting brackets?

I gotta bug my buddy with the red FD for the fab work. I'm thinking of something to hold the coils out front and the water injection tank. Should fit with my turbojeff battery tray.

I'll post pics and updates as I make progress. I'd like to see what other people have done.

Succes

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RENESISFD has it nailed. The stock black/white wire is a power feed to the stock ignitor. 12V+ is fed to the coils through this wire, so it's a heavy gauge. We're just using it for a turn on signal for the relay in the new harness. Amp draw is minimal, so the yellow wire is 20g. The high current for the coils comes through the red wires in your harness that connect directly to the battery, through the fuse and relay.

The PFC is a 3-channel ECU. The leading coils will fire together is wastespark, just like the stock system. The advantage of the Mercury coils in this configuration is that they require a relatively low charge time to produce a strong spark. 3ms will net around 115mj. We can run them at around 4.5ms in wastespark and produce a stronger spark than an LS truck coil will make at 6.0ms. If you ever change ECUs, it's will be possible to run the coils in a 4-channel sequential mode. Since you're not really dwell limited with the PFC and wastespark, there's not a great rush to change.

Matt, there should just be one ground lug in your harness. Since it was convenient to the construction of the harness, I ran everything back to the negative terminal of the batter. These coils have 3 pins on the connector that are all used for grounding. The idea, in the OE configuration, is that the various grounds are used for power and misfire detection. In the aftermarket application, all 3 pins can be grounded to the same place. The rotor housing or cylinder head is a good location, since the block should have a very good connection to the negative terminal of the battery. Grounding directly to the battery negative terminal also works well. I would not use a chassis ground.

Awesome, thanks for the info. That's exactly what I'm looking to get in this thread. I want people to be able to look here and see how easy it can be to switch to these. I love how simple it is with the harness you made for me. I'm about to head to the garage now and try and come up with some ideas for mounting. If you have any pics of these mounted to show some options please feel free to post them here.

Here are some pics of my coils mounted. You will notice that they are mounted on an angle. That is so that they clear the shock tower.

Attachment 718391

Test fitting. Don't mind the crappy welds i fixed them on the finished bracket.

Attachment 718392

Attachment 718393

Attachment 718394

Attachment 718395


John

Any updates on this

^ These coils really pump out some spark. On the way down to deals gap I had an ID 2000 secondary stick open:shocking:. The car would not run on the rear rotor because of this. We pulled the fuel pump fuse and with a few seconds of craking the car was running on the excess fuel in the rear rotor housing. There was literally raw fuel dripping out of my exhaust. I did not have to do a deflood procedure inorder to start the car. So far I am very happy with them.

Right now my car is making 400WHP with AI at 15psi and the coils show no signs of ignition issues.





John

I need to get my car put back together and back on the dyno. I found out that for some reason, I've had insanely high EGT's. I had my exhaust manifold slightly modified to fit my Turblown LIM and turbine housing heat shields. While doing this I found my exhaust manifold had zero carbon in it and my turbine blade was melting. I'm hoping to finish putting it back together and on the dyno in the next couple weeks. I've also been hoping to get my headlights back from Sakebombgarage and my new seats before driving it so I've been moving slow.

Is there still any benefit to running these coils with a twin power or aftermarket system? Excuse me inexperience.

^ No the point of these coils is to eliminate the stock system including the igniter and to eliminate the need for a twin power.

These coils are an aftermarket system in and of itself.

Hey John, I'm coming in late here but wouldn't it be wise to at least wire a leading amp inline as long as the output is > 119mj as the coils are rated for (off the top of my head).

BTW, don't take such big bites. You're gonna choke!!!

I dont really understand what you are asking..... You want to run an ignition amplifier to help increase the output even more?


This is taken from lms-efi.com

"Very excited to announce that we now have a source for the IGN and IGN-1A Mercury Marine ignition coils! AEM is rebadging these coils and offering them under their name. We'll have the IGN (no internal ignitor) and the IGN-1A (built-in ignitor) priced at $55 and $72 respectively. These coils are HOT! 103 mJ output compared with an M&W CDI's 115 mJ output!"

BTW, Thats not me in my avatar:lol:

Yes, increase the output as long as it doesn't cause premature life at the coil. I have some nice "boards" that can produce 135mj and are the size of a piece of bread. Maybe I'll give Jarad an experiment for half price.

I know it's not you. Only Rich winks at people when he eats... lol

Do you really think they need to be cranked up? I was very impressed with them at the rest stop. As you saw, raw fuel was coming out of my exhaust but the plugs still fired. No need for deflooding of the engine.

I think you can increase output just changing dwell time, C. Ludwig should know.

Yes you can, But you can only go so far. The amount of dwell time directly correlates to your desired maximum RPM.

Basically if the dwell time is too long the coil may not fire when it is supposed to because the engine is spinning too fast. What that RPM is on a rotary; I do not know. The maximum dwell time is 9.0ms allowed by the literature printed on the coils.

Also, there must be some limitation I would not think you can make your dwell time too long and the coil continually will put out more power.

And yes, I am sure C. ludwig would know.

found this info direct from C. Ludwig:

^ Sweet info.

I am running mine at 4.5ms dwell time.

This looks like a sweet set-up. Seriously giving it some thought. Where did you pick them up at? Forgive, me if I missed it. I was speed reading the thread.

http://www.lms-efi.com/
He is C. ludwig on the forum

For those asking about a CDI or "amp", with the IGN-1A/smart coil, this is not even an option. The built-in ignitor precludes the use of any kind of external device. As has been stated in the posts quoting our site, the coil is capable of outputting anywhere from around a 100mJ up to 250mJ based on dwell. Again for comparison, the common MSD 6A, M&W street, and Dynatech boxes are rated around 100-125mJ. This coil can deliver the same spark energy at a relatively low dwell period AND delivery a spark duration than is several times longer than any CDI. They really are the best of both worlds.

I can sell you an M&W box, and stand to profit a whole lot more, but the IGN-1A coils will produce more spark energy than most will ever need, are a relatively inexpensive choice, and have the potential to produce a better idle and low engine speed response because of a longer spark duration than any CDI.

The quoted peak output requires a dwell time of around 6ms. The coil can NOT be run at a constant dwell time of 6ms under continuous operation. It will fail. The most dwell we recommend for continuous operation is 4.5ms. Many aftermarket ECUs only allow a single, universal dwell setting. In this case, you need to select the highest setting that will allow the coil to live under continuous duty operation. Higher end ECUs allow mappable dwell, and in this case you can charge the coil harder on demand. For instance you would charge the coil around 3.0ms under normal loads but ramp dwell up versus boost and have more potential ignition energy available under high loads when it's needed.

Lastly, RENESISFD's comment that the coil would not fire at the correct time if it were charged too long is not accurate. The coils do NOT auto discharge like a few inductive coils are known to the do. If cycle time at high RPM becomes less than the requested charge time, you will simply not achieve the requested dwell time. Spark instant will remain the same.

so if the requested dwell is 4.5 but at 8500 I only have 3.0 then they will still fire but at a lower energy?

I was just about to relocate the coils on my car, so I think I may just go ahead and do this upgrade. Great info here, thanks guys!

Yes

Tried checking out his website, but the internet here in Afghanistan thinks it's porn and has blocked it.

I ordered a set of these coils from C.Ludwig last week. I decided to do my own harness. I used braided sleeving through out with a sealed relay for power and a Delphi connector to connect to where the OEM ignitor used to be. I took the label under clear heat shrink idea from TwinCharged7.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8012/7...da1129e6_c.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8007/7...fd374a46_c.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7123/7...935eea17_c.jpg

I mounted the coils to the old A/C location similar to what was done here

Car fired right up today for the first time with the new coils. The car feels smoother at idle and cursing around, additionally I noticed a slight increase in vacuum at idle.

I have not changed the dwell settings in the PFC yet as I'm not quite sure how the values in FC-Edit relate to dwell ms. However after running it for a while the coils stay bone cold so I know they are not being overworked. Im going to look into setting the dwell on the PFC, however I'm not going to stress over it too much as I will be switching to a different ECU in the coming weeks.

Everything looks great jhnrx7 except I think you should move your fuse closer to the battery.

Ideally you want the shortest distance to the fuse from the battery in case of a short.

Good catch. I was concerned with making it easily accessible and I did not even consider that. I have extra pins for the relay so I can easily flip it around and re-pin the existing wire :icon_tup:

For the record, I called C. Ludwig today and he said the harness runs about $100. So you're looking at $388 before shipping for 4 coils and the harness. Can't beat that. Compare it to that much if not more for a Twin power, plus you can sell all your factory stuff and come away with a less cluttered, less failure prone, new, and better ignition system. No brainer.

easiest thing to install, my grand mother can do it!!!!
at first when i received the coils, i was a lil scare to mess up, my friend had a lot of trouble installing the MSD or something coil and ignitor on his 240. i ask theWird and C.Ludwig for advise, but i only got it when i was done with it lol, but the good thing about it, its when i was done i have something to look at to make sure i didnt mess up.
i'm not a electric engineer, but i have a very good knowledge of electricity, even if i'm an Ironworker by trade. i often study Tesla and watch MIT class too. its a MIT course for free :) (for anyone interested, pm me and i'll tell you where to get the class videos.) anyway not to write a book. they easy to install and they are very good and not expensive at all. my idle is steady, better vacuum and no more hesitation. AEM ICHIBAN!!!!!!!!

How many mJ's do the coils put out at a dwell of 4.5 ms?

Do you have pictures of how they are mounted in the stock A/C position?
do oyu still use the stock power steering pump?
do you use stock-lenght spark wires or custom made ones?

:)

I will get a picture later tonight.
I still have the OEM power steering installed.
Custom length wires... OEM wires might work as the custom wires were pretty short.

Honestly, I'm not sure. The numbers I've been quoted at 100-115mJ at 3.0ms and up to 250mJ at 6.0. Assuming a linear curve they should be in the 175-190mJ range at 4.5ms.

I'd like to build a board so that I can test the output, amp draw, spark duration, etc. Finding the time to do it will be the challenge.

I'm sold on these - Just need to workout where I can fit them into the engine bay!

That's sounds good. Like I said in PM I will be in touch soon about the coils. Think I have got a buyer for my twin power and stuff so should have some free cash :)

Installed shot. They are tucked away in there pretty well, so its hard to get a good shot of them. They are a nice fit in that location, however I might be moving them in the future because Im seriously considering re-installing A/C :lol:


https://www.rx7club.com/attachment.p...1&d=1342739990

I have a PFC custom tune on a single turbo, will these coils PnP without a retune? I plan to get the car retuned down the road, but I'm doing a lot of work on it at the moment. I don't want to not be able to drive it if I install new ignition coils.

I did not need to re-tune when I installed them on my car, but your results may vary. Lots of factors involved such as the state of your current ignition setup and what your current tune looks like. Thats not to say that there wont be more to gain from fine tuning after you install these.

Also, you will need access to a datalogit to adjust the dwell settings.

I need to just research tuning a rotary and tune it myself. I've personally tuned every other car that I've owned, but the 13b has me a little intimidated. I'm sure that everything is working well on my car at the moment, I just want to upgrade the ignition for future power goals and coil relocation.

My ignition seems to be a well functioning OEM system, and the tune was done by Rotary Performance in Garland, TX. I'm sure that it's pretty good in it's current state with only 300whp and 8psi.

thank you for the picture and the infos!
This is the way to go for me, I hope you don't mind if I copy your design ;)

@C.Ludwig

Is it possible to do a plug and play harness for this location without routing the harness to the stock igniter location?
So, that the adapter harness plugs into the stock ignition harness conector and a "dummy" connector for the stock igniter plug?