Alright let’s see if I can explain this without confusing anyone. So I upgraded my coil harness to the updated harness with the ground built in. I have an adaptronic emod ecu and before trying to start the car I had spark from all coils, and all plugs and all wires. Put an ffe trigger wheel on and it started right up.

After some issues with some inputs on my ecu failing, I finally got my fuel and oil pressure sensors to work. Went to remote tune for break in with Shawn and couldn’t get a timing light to run off of either leading coil wire. Hooked up another leading coil that I have and same issue. Both leading coils I have work if I plug them into the trailing coil connectors. Both trailing coils spark during the test without issue so basically I’m guessing my car has been idling off of the trailing plugs alone.

I did a continuity check on the coil harness and I have continuity. Now doing it through the harness to the ecu it wasn’t a consistent beep and was hard to get. So before my ecu input issue for fuel and oil pressure sensors when I got it started I had spark, and it showed up on my igniter test in the ecu program.

At at this point I’m lost. The connecter to the ignition harness is a deutsche connector that I did myself so I’m pretty sure the wiring is fine. I’ve heard the igniters are rarely the problem. I’m hoping it isn’t the 5v input on the ecu which is pin 1h.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Even testing the coils they all tested fine with a multimeter. At this point I’m lost and when trying to figure out my sensors adaptronic support kept trying to tell me it was a wiring issue when I switched inputs in the ecu and received signal on a different source even though the wiring didn’t change.

 

Look at your grounds. I added a SunAuto Hyperground system that improved every electrical component in my car. The power at my ECU (Power FC) went from a 1.4 volt drop from the battery voltage to a 0.2 volt drop. The old saying of garbage in garbage out is true. The coils need a strong ground signal from the ECU to discharge. Check your wiring harness ground, ECU ground, and every other ground point on the engine. Adding solid grounds does work and may solve your problem.
Mike

 

Grounds seem like a logical place to start. Our cars are very sensitive to grounding issues.

That being said, I have read that a few people have had issues with the internal circuitry failing on the Adaptronic's. I suggest a quick check with the stock ECU if possible, that will tell you if it's the wiring or the ECU pretty quickly.

 

I considered that but my car is non sequential I’m not even sure if it would start on it.

 

If your primary injectors are still stock, it will probably start and idle. If not, then just unplug the injectors and have a body crank it so you can check for spark with the factory ecu.

Vince

 

Stock ECU will work as long as you have stock primary injectors and all the primary inputs (water temp, air temp, TPS, etc.) are all there. It will show codes for the unplugged/removed solenoids but it should start and run.

Dale

 

Well I forgot I have an FFE trigger wheel and that will definitely keep the stock ecu from working. However the plot thickens. I tested all of my coils, all i did was unplug the harness for the coils and the igniter, I did a continuity test on the coil harness. all good, did a continuity test from the igniter to the ecu, and that was good. Now lets keep in mind this car was running for weeks, and adaptronic looked at a log from the end of july and everything was sparking fine. The car has never actually driven more than out in the parking lot of the shop I work in. I unplugged the ecu and pulled the control board out to make sure all the boards were on and were tight.

First thing ecu does when plugged into laptop is it loads up eugene but says invalid vehicle ID, which is something it has said since the first time I plugged it in I just never thought much of it. Now I was having trouble with inputs for the adaptronic designated fuel pressure and oil pressure sensors. They worked at first, then quit. I am using the same wiring just plugged into an open input on harness connector 2 and harness connector 3 and both of my pressure sensors are working fine now.

Now the new thing is I'm not getting spark at all. I had spark the day before on the trailing coils while testing wiring for continuity and coils for spark. All of my coils were pulled and still test out within FSM parameters. All coils show that they are receiving 12 volts in the ecu software on the igniter test. The only change was I unplugged the ECU. At this point I am leaning towards a failed board on the ecu, because if it was a bad ground I feel like I would have had this problem from the start. I had issues with getting it to start for first start until I saw my OEM trigger wheel had a slight bend, as soon as I put an FFE wheel in it fired first try with fuel cut engaged and ran until I shut it off, because I didn't expect it to start. I checked the 40 amp fuse beside the power steering and it appears to be fine.


Any thoughts now?

 

Had a buddy running an Adaptronic that had some similar flaky things going on. He would re-load the map into the ECU and it would fire right up.

Does the ECU show that it's receiving the CAS signal when cranking the engine?

I'm leaning towards an ECU problem here.

Dale

 

yeah I didn't try reloading the map, however I was in the middle of tuning with shawn via remote access. and I didn't even think to check CAS signal friday night when I went to send them a log of just the trailing coils firing. It's almost like everytime i update firmware it goes poop.