Comitatus

Ok, the NGK wires can be used with the MSD ignitions...MSD's site said that any of their ignition boxes must be used with a wound core wire, not a solid core wire.



I am having trouble locating a list of coils that can be used on their site. I am pretty confident that our stock coils will be fine, as many people have used them with Ignition boxes before...I just like to double check and see things with my own eyes.

AnthonyNYC

Any updates with this one?



The stock TurboII coils are excellent. The FD coils would fry pretty quickly with MSDs, I replaced mine with T2 coils and never had an issue. As for the wires, I used the stock NGKs with no issues on an E6K.



Since you are not sure what's causing the issue I would start my setting the same timing in all the timing maps (make sure you check coolant and air temp correction as well) and put a timing light on the car and make sure the timing is dead locked and you are not experiencing any spark scatter. You would be surprised what you can find when you do this.



I would also stay away from the MSDs at this point and make sure you don't have an ignition issue before you add another item into the equation. Also datalog everything at this point, every full throttle pull should have a datalog so when feel the hiccup you could at least look at the data and see if you can find anything there. Did the datalogs show anything in the original dyno pulls?



Anthony

Comitatus

I haven't been on the High Boost map since the motor has been back together...but on the low boost map, I have redlined it many times and havent experienced the upper RPM stutter issue that I had before. I rerouted the NGK plug wires away from each other and also made sure the CAS wiring was clear of interference as well. The alternator wiring is on its own, too.



To be honest, I'm still a bit hesitant to put it back on the race map and redline it. I'm still a bit gunshy to get near redline again, not knowing what to expect. I might just wait till I can bring BDC back up for another tune, and get some more fine tuning done on both maps...and really dial in everything nice and tight.



As of right now, I haven't installed the MSD 6AL, but I think I might soon, everything seems to be ok, and I think the Stock NGK wires and coils can handle it. Eventually I will upgrade all the coils to an aftermarket setup, but still deciding and waiting to see on which setups work the best.



I want to get some shielding and shield all the wires necessary in the bay, to eliminate as much RF noise and interference as possible. I'll try to snap a few pics soon and show how I have everything routed right now.

Comitatus

Update: 3-28-07



Put in my NGK 10.5 plugs last night, a fresh 8 gallons of 110 leaded in the tank, loaded up my race gas map, and went out to do some pulls on the highway. Went out for about 15-20 minutes and did quite a few pulls.



Datalogged pretty much every pull I made, did some 3rd gears, 4th gears, 3rd to 4th, 3rd to 5th, and a 2nd to 4th.



Everything felt decent....didnt feel as fast as it did last summer, but I am still getting BREAKUP at 7200rpms...grrrrr



I have no idea what is.....but its really frustrating.



I have sent the Datalogs to BDC in hopes that he might be able to spot something, if not, I have no idea where to go from here.

BDC

Thank the Lord, Luke and I found the cause today. After I finally got off my tail to check out the 10-odd datalogs he'd made and zipped up for me to check out, we found the problem. I initially went hunting for oddities in the RPM graph hoping to find some sort of intermittent large spikes or dips (something like spiking to 16krpm or dropping to 0 all of the sudden, etc.) but didn't find anything. After a few minutes of going over his logs, I figured up his race gas map on my laptop and looked at the last 5 or so of his datalogs I'd logged from his Haltech. The problem was (and still is) is



This is the first verifiable case in all of my years as an enthusiast and professional that I've seen this happen due to fuel cut. My power estimate was that he was sitting between 430 and 470rwhp, given the boost, motor setup, turbo, fuel pump and injector setup, etc. Regardless, the Haltech E6X shutting fuel down due to the Inj DC sitting at 100% for a chunk of time is what seems to be the culprit.



It appears that the causes of housing deflection are becoming wider and wider in scope -- It seems as if any kind of motivated or inspired interruption of normal, smooth power output while the engine is under heavy load and outputting alot of power is the general cause. In short, going from gobs of power, to nothing, then right back to gobs of power for whatever reason that's making the motor misfire is shock-loading the rotor housings and making them deflect laterally away from the housings on the driver's side. The latter-years irons' dowel lands don't break anywhere near as much because, well, they're fatter.



Causes I can think of off the top of my head:



- Blowing out spark from running too rich a mixture with respect to the output power of the ignition system (what I suspect is the cause of my front plate's dowel land cracking)

- EMI or RF noise problem interfering with trigger input from poor spark plug wires, noise output to the trigger harness from the alternator, etc

- Steadily progressive (both in scope and frequency) misfire due to running too hot a plug for too hot a load environment (defacto glow plugs)

- Lack of resistor-type spark plug

- Firing spark too early for the given fuel type in the charge due to poor tuning or other system-related component failure

- Auto-ignition of too low octane or too volatile fuel, prior to timed spark event, during the compression stroke

- And apparently hard fuel cut



Anybody else have any thoughts on this? Just from what's coming to mind on this, it's making re-think the paradigm of using fuel cut on standalones as a means of rev-limitting...



B

Cornfed

WOW.......thats awesome you guys seem to have figured it out. Now Luke and I can get to some open track events this year......just no Race gas. 100% duty cycles.......LMAO, i would have thought that would have been noticed when tuning last year. Good job guys!!

Comitatus

Thanks Dan! I think the reason it didn't show during the tuning last year, was because of the temps of the summer heat. It was a pretty warm day, and especially on the dyno, everything was heatsoaked. As you know, everything becomes less efficient that way, and we were seeing around 85% duty cycles at the 18.5psi mark. That is where we wanted to stop because we knew we were going to run out of pump very quickly after that point.



Given the fact that when I put race gas in the other night, and made the logs, temps were much cooler outside...so at around 17 psi and right at 7k rpms, duty cycles were flat at 100%.



After discussing things with BDC, we have come to the conclusion that it wasnt ignition related. The logs show no sign of that. I'm assuming that the E6X has the same feature as an E6K and has a fuel cut built in when duty cycles are at 100% so it will keep the injectors from frying themselves...and seriously, who wants to be running high loads at 100% DC, not I.



I just put some 93 back in the tank, and loaded the pump map back in. After I get back from vacation, I will make do some more pulls and logs on 12psi and make sure everything is where it needs to be. From there I'm calling it a day, and will piece together an alcohol system, with hopes to have it installed and get it tuned to push 24-25psi by the end of the year.



If anyone else has any thoughts, please post them up. This thread has been very helpful and informative to us!