no connection to the E6K, and cranks but will not start...
 

So my car has been running beautifully since BDC tuned it last summer, a full season of racing without any major problems(no tuning issues at all). Last event of the season I had a pretty bad oil leak, so I shut it down, and brought it home. several weeks later, I cleaned I up, and looked around, but saw no leak, I did not run it hard, just idle, and various RPMS in the garage, (up to 80psi). Anyway I started it every couple weeks in the off season, with the intention of working on it now. Yesterday I try to start the car, and I cannot get the car to fire. I put in some regular plugs(I ordinarily run 11.5s), and tried again, still will not fire. So I try to connect the laptop to the E6K, and I get "reconnect Haltech". All the relays are working, the fuel pump is doing its 2 second prime(40 psi at the FPR), the CAS, and the coils are withithin spec, so what the heck??? Help me out here guys, as Brian will attest, I m not exactly expert with the haltech :( TIA Carl

Just to be clear, NO spark......

is your tach bouncing when you crank?

i know it's redundant, but have you checked the fuses and the rest of the basic stuff? (sorry, had to ask).

i just had a similar problem with an e8, except the fuel pump wouldn't prime. they told me it sounded like the over-voltage resistor had been damaged. it's in aussie-land being repaired right now.

Tach does not bounce, fuses are good....I think the odd thing is no signal from the ECU to the laptop, that should be the clue to the no spark.?.

that's what i'm thinking.

did you do any welding to the car over the break, or short anything out?

Can you get another K and load your map in there and see if it fires, if id does my guess is your K might need to be sent down under.

If, however, it behaves the same, and you also cant connect with it, then i would disect your harness, to see if there are loose pins on the connector, or maybe even some sulfate on any of them that might have damaged the connections. Also look inside the serial connector on the harness, but if the car isnt starting im guessing its ECU related. Where is your ECU located?

Try swapping ECUs and see what happens. If you cant find a K, you could try an S, at the very least you could hook it up to the harness, turn the ignition on and try going online with it. If that happens then your ECU is kaput.

if its got no spark, and no connection, id say its not getting turned on, try some sweet talk, maybe flowers, massage....

fuses? maybe a relay went south?

The ECU must be powering up, the fuel pump primes. I oiled down the engine bay pretty heavily when my overflow overflowed LOL, so maybe something got shorted, and damaged, but again the fuses are good. I do not have access to another ECU, this may be the time to pull the mess of factory, and Haltech wirin out of the car, and do a nice clean install. The biggest problem I have is that I did not install it, and the install is a little funky with 2 Reluctors, 3 MSD6A etc. If it was a gutted bay/dash, or I had done the install I could troubleshoot it I suspect. The ECU is in the stock location.

In a nutshell, it worked, and then it sat. The battery was dead, and I put it on a charger, maybe the charger somehow damaged the ECU. I did do the "50 amp start" using the charger, maybe some funky voltage damage. Still why no connection...

I found that the un-used MSD pigtails for a Tach(2 of the 3 boxes) which I had tucked under theMSDs were immersed in a puddle of oil held in the battery tray, I suppose this could have damage the MSDs, still if the boxes were bad the ECU would talk to the laptop....

in theory, but isnt that what the 3amp fuse is?

you sure the fuel pumpage isnt just with the key?

The two second prime is the ECU for sure. As for the 3 amp fuse, yes. So what would cause no connection on a powered ECU. Since the car is getting no spark, is that due to a faulty ECU, or an ECU reacting to a fault of some sort?I really would not want to connect another ECU to the car if there is risk of damaging it. As I said earlier I am a rank amatuer in terms of my familiarity. There must be a simple check I can do. I can see fuel returning to the fuel cell, but the plugs are dry, so again we are back to the ECU. No Spark, No fuel, No connection, but the pump prime works. Can the ECU prime if it is otherwise not functioning?? Most likely it would seem no spark, so no fuel= no fun... still, why no connection... This is something REALLYsimple. the car worked three weeks ao, just a dead battery in between.

carl, i have an e6k here.

i can send it to you, but i need it back ASAP!! shoot me an email with your address.

does your battery charger have an automatic shutoff? if it doesn't, did you leave it on overnight, and maybe overcharge it?

yeah if it does the 2 second prime thing, then the ecu must be on. i'd need to look at the wiring diagram, or the car to go any further, but seems like maybe the ecu?

maybe com port isn't configure properly and/or serial cable going bad? Its very rare for the E6K to go bad. They would either crap out all together or it'll work fine.

^this is what happened to me...scratched my head for days...then finally tried a new cable.

try to at least get the computer talking so you can see what's going on.

oh and make sure your grounds are still solid...if you sanded paint to get the ground, corrosion could have taken place during the off season.

You seem to have either one major problem or two seperate ones.
If you were able to connect to the ecu then it would have made diagnosing the no start condition easier.
I've seen re-connect problems being a result of an in-compatable laptop, wrong software version, faulty wiring, bad serial cable, wrong com port configuration or the worse a damaged com port chip on the board. Are you using the same laptop, software etc.?
Do you have anyone close that you can swap your ecu into their car and see if it works? Whatever you do don't try a working ecu on your car just in case it's a wiring problem.

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts on this. Ted, as usual, you are bored, and off base. I agree with Crispeed, I did not want to connect it to another ECU for fear of damaging it. Dave, and I talked about it, and decided otherwise. The Install is good albeit done but by bit by several different guys. I tried a new cable already, that did not fix it. I do not know of any local E6K cars. Unless RXHEAVEN is E6K, J9, any thoughts? Laptop worked with the ECU before, neither 6.09, or 6.34 work. Carwas simply siting so it makes no sense at all. Car is in a garage, so really no corrosion problems, and all the relays and pumps work, so ground seems unlikely. I may just go for a complete new install, and get rid of all the stock wiring, it just makes for too many things to troubleshoot, especially at the track.I will just go through the system wire by wire one more time. Thanks, Carl

Try booting your system off line then switch to online

i might be able to come up with a working e6k, you're somewhere far away though huh?

Not sure what you mean, do you mean go to the offline mode, and then switch to online? If yes, I did try that. Thanks, Carl

I am in NorCal, an hour north of SF.

What would be ideal is an E6K car near me...

You said it's not firing...CAS is really really sensitive to ground way more sensitive than relays. Until you check I wouldn't rule it out...unless your garage is climate controlled, corrosion on bare metal can/will happen. You also said you didn't do the install, so the GND's might not be up to par to begin with.

I posted this earlier today...have a look.
https://www.rx7club.com/showthread.p...27#post5382327

Here's another thought for you Carl. Have you done a compression test on your engine. If I remembered correctly, you run leaded race gas on your car. My maroon car engine runs strictly C16 leaded fuel. I didn't touched the car for 2 yrs due to lack of time and energy. I brought the car back to the shop so that I could get it running and go to the track a few weeks ago, it turns out that all my internals were rusted from lead. I have no compression in the engine and was unable to free up the rust with ATF, now, I had to check my gas tank for rust along with tearing down the engine to refresh all components.

I wouldn't rule out rusted spark plugs, internal components, clogged injectors along with low compression due to leaded fuel if I were you.