bad disty?

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » January 9th, 2006, 4:35 pm

just got done taking my multimeter to my coil, i have 1.6-1.8 ohms in the primary winding and 10,180 ohms in the secondary. from what i can find online this is OK. i can't find any specific specifications for my coil though, i have a jeg's red hot coil or something like that.

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » January 10th, 2006, 3:06 pm

there are some grey deposits (carbon?) on the inside of my disty cap where the rotor contacts it. there is also some on the tip of the rotor itself. i previously replaced the cap/rotor but not after changing out the disty. should the deposits be there or should it still be gold and shiney? i checked my last cap and rotor and they have the same thing on them (i had the problem then too). i'll try to post some pictures later. oh, i also pulled the plugs and they look pretty good, i may be running slightly rich but that shouldn't be causing a misfire.

jaydog5678 · Post by **jaydog5678** » January 11th, 2006, 2:27 pm

The rotor and cap should be o.k. A slightly rich mixture is o.k. as well.

Your running out of things to look at...

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » January 11th, 2006, 6:20 pm

yea i know...that's why it's getting so annoying. i looked online and found out that standard oil filled coils must be mounted in an upright position or they can short circuit internally. mine was mounted sideways so i turned it right side up, didn't make a difference but i'm gonna leave it that way for a couple days and see what happens...i don't know if using them when they aren't vertical can damage them or if they just won't work properly though. maybe it got damaged? seems like my coil test wouldn't have turned out then...

BuGS: i also read on the MSD website that platinum or iridum plugs are not recommended with and MSD ignition (if you have one).

Franko: What is this rotor phasing that you speak of?

thanks, if you guys have any other ideas let me know

ariesdude · Post by **ariesdude** » January 11th, 2006, 7:15 pm

I dont have turbo - but i had a somewhat similar problem - the engine would stumble a lot at high rpms. I replaced the coolant temp sensor, O2 Sensor and did a coolant flush (there were a lot of air pockets) - i dont know which one of them fixed it - but the problem went away. Sorry if this doesnt help ....

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » January 11th, 2006, 10:02 pm

i can check the o2 and coolant readings that are being sent from the sensors on the haltech and they are both fine. i also flushed my coolant really well during the summer. thanks for the ideas anyways though

Franko · Post by **Franko** » January 12th, 2006, 12:50 am

Ok, rotor phasing is a bit confusing but here it goes. *takes deep breath*
Since our cars have a distributor instead of coil packs (direct fire) ignition, the distributor has to aligned properly or else youll get whats called a cross fire. When you look at a rotor button and the inside of a distributor cap, imagine that spinning at speed when the engine is running, you can see that there isnt much time for the spark to occur to make it from the tip of the rotor button to the cyl that it needs to go to. If you dont have the distributor in just the right place then the rotor button will have gone too far past the cyl its supposed to fire on and fire on the next one instead, or the one before. Now this is where its a little confusing.. Assume that the maximum timing youll ever have is 40 btdc and the minimum is 10 btdc, well apparently what you would do is set the base timing on the distributor at 25 btdc since it is right between these two points. When I say base timing I am talking about the physical timing the engine is at.. You would have the engine at top dead center on cyl # 1 and rotate the crank 25 degrees backwards, then at this point align the electrode for #1 cyl directly with the rotor button.
Ok, so thats all fine and dandy.. align rotor buttons and crank rotation and so on but here is where it seems to get very confusing, I havent figured this problem out myself totally yet but I will once I start to drive the car and mess with it.. So youre base timing is set at 25 degrees btdc, great.. You fire up the haltech software and look at the engine data page and it says youre at 15 degrees advance at idle, but then you begin to wonder is that actually what the timing is at or is that 15 degrees on top of 25 or what. What it must be is the haltech is sending the signal to fire the coil 15 degrees before top dead center regardless of where the rotor button is, 15 is the signal the haltech is sending right at that moment. What I ended up doing before I put the car away was setting the lock timing in the haltech to 10 degrees, that means 10 degrees timing no matter what rpm or temp or whatever else so it would be easy to set up, then getting the timing on the distributor set with a timing light so that it would read 10 degrees on the crank. Although the car idles and revs fine, I feel that I am going to have problems with it set up like this since that means the center of the rotor button is aligned with cyl # 1 at 10 degrees before top dead center and at 40 degrees advance the tip of the rotor button will be so far away from the electrode that the spark will have stretched a huge amount and I think that by doing this I will end up with the cross firing problem myself. Im going to have to set it at 25 btdc like I said since now its at 10 which is no good. Whats annoying is I can only read about it and theorize until spring comes back and I can start messing with the car again.
Please correct me if I am wrong here anybody.. but Im pretty sure that Im right, its what the halteh manual says to set up for a distributor.
Timing can be both easy to understand and confusing.. I might just have to go to the four coils on four cyl setup and get rid of the distributor alltogethor.

*catches breath*

Im thinking rotor phasing could be your problem.. Or the charge time for your coil is wrong... Could be that too..

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » January 12th, 2006, 2:49 pm

ok, i get what you are saying. previously my disty was rotated almost as far clockwise as it would go (most advanced). my first incompetent dyno tuner turned it to there (instead of changing the trigger angle). after awhile i thought that this may be causing me problems when trying to change the ignition maps so i moved the disty to approximately the middle and then adjusted my trigger angle to compensate.

so anyways, on to my next attempt at fixing the problem. i took my multimeter to the disty cap terminals and i got 0 ohms when i touched the gold part of the terminals and almost no continuity when i touched the carboned areas. so my thinking is that maybe when my disty was turned all the way clockwise that it was causing crossfiring which messed up my terminal points, when i turned the disty to the middle there wasn't much of a change because the terminals were already messed up.

i know for sure that the cap/rotor need replacing again, i'm just hoping that they don't get carboned up again.

it does make sense that the phase angle could have been my problem, since the problem started when i left the dyno and he messed with the distributor.

well hopefully a new cap/rotor does it. MSD also recommended a different coil (one with 1.5 ohms or less of primary resistance). i'm gonna try the cap/rotor combo first though. i'll let you guys know how it turns out.

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » January 12th, 2006, 3:56 pm

well new cap/rotor didn't do it either

it ran smoother but there was still a miss in the same spots.

ariesdude · Post by **ariesdude** » January 12th, 2006, 4:53 pm

here is a stupid thought - can you run it at 0 boost and rule out any boost related problems? Does it occur at all boost levels or only at particular boost level? Another really stupid thought - could the timing belt be slipping slightly at higher rpms?

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » January 12th, 2006, 6:08 pm

i would have to somehow keep the wastegate in the open position to prevent it from boosting. it can probably be done somehow but i don't know.

the timing belt has ribs on it so if it was slipping it would skip to the next notch and then my timing would be off for all RPMs. i also replaced the belt when i rebuilt the engine so it should be fine.

i'm thinking that it might still be the rotor phasing. i looked it up in the haltech manual and it says that they don't recommend just turning the disty until it works, they say move the trigger sensor...but i don't think we can move the sensor that is inside the disty can we?

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » January 12th, 2006, 10:41 pm

hey jaydog, could you post all of your trigger and ignition settings? that way i could atleast verify that all my settings are correct.

the more i mess with this the more i'm leaning towards maybe some bad valves or something...this also seems weird since it only happens at certain RPMs though...i'll probably compression test it just in case. other than that the only things i can think of are bad coil or bad ignition box...anyone know what RPM the MSD stops doing multiple sparks and just does one? maybe there is a fault there...but then it should happen at that RPM no matter what the load...

nothing seems to make complete sense.

hmmm, just read a thing from MSD they recommend a 3.5-4.0 millisecond coil charge time (atleast for their blaster 2 coil), i'm currently only running 1.0ms, guess that's next on the list.

ryanlindenberg · Post by **ryanlindenberg** » January 13th, 2006, 8:14 pm

well changing the charge time fixed my problem

i turned up the charge time before but it didn't help, maybe i forgot to turn the key off and then on again after i changed it or something, someone suggested 0.8ms charge time and the haltech install guide said 1.0ms so i went with 1.0. for some reason it worked for a week and then didn't anymore...oh well problem is solved now

thanks for the help guys

puromx3 · Post by **puromx3** » March 19th, 2012, 1:47 pm

hey wuts up guys, im wiring in my haltech e6k to my bpt, everything is there but i cant seem to figure out the ignition side of it. it cranks just doesnt get any spark. Im trying to set up Hei mod with coil but im not quite sure how to wire it to the haltech side. Please i need you help, any diagrams or advice let me know. Thank you.

Josh · Post by **Josh** » March 19th, 2012, 3:28 pm

puromx3 wrote:hey wuts up guys, im wiring in my haltech e6k to my bpt, everything is there but i cant seem to figure out the ignition side of it. it cranks just doesnt get any spark. Im trying to set up Hei mod with coil but im not quite sure how to wire it to the haltech side. Please i need you help, any diagrams or advice let me know. Thank you.

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bad disty?

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