RotoHead

Is anyone familiar with the various ignition systems on the market. I have seen adds that claim to boost HP and MPG, but wondered if these increases were significant on a carbed 12A. Also, is this something that would help us Californians pass smog do to a more thorough burn of gasoline? If these things do help out, what is the most widely accepted "best" system for our cars?

Thank you lots,
Chris

smnc

Well, the stock ingition is actually quite good. There are better systems on the market, but on a car with a stock N/A motor I dunno how much benifit you're gonna get.

A lot of people do the MSD 6A upgrade, but from what I understand, it takes a bit of tinkering, as it was not designed for Rotaries.
I'm currently looking into the Jacobs RotaryMaster sold at RotaryPerformance, which was designed especially for Rotary engines.

I'm kinda interested to hear other peoples opinions on this too.

speckamp

I think the biggest ignition gains your going to get is through a conversion to direct fire for the leading plugs. The trailings play mostly cleanup, and don't do a whole lot to produce power. By direct firing the leading plugs (one coil per plug, firing simultaniously) the off rotor (the one that's in it's exhaust stroke) gets a spark as well as the one that's getting ignited to produce power. This helps emissions by providing what I believe Mazda called a "cleanup spark." Basically it helps ignite the rest of the mixture that might be still be in that odd shaped chamber. There has been some debate about the MSD box. It provides extremely fast, high voltage, low current sparks. Great for a piston engine with a staticly located mixture, but when the mixture is moving past the spark plugs as in a rotary, there's been some debate about how benificial they actually are. Mine's not hooked up yet, so I can't comment directly. But overall everyone has said that conversion to a direct fire setup is definatly benificial.

Here's some links for further reading...
http://www.rx-7.org/1stgen/msd6a.htm - Max7's MSD 6a write-up.
http://www.geocities.com/cd23c/dlidfis.html - Jeff20b's Directi Fire Ignition write up, w/ some MSD-related info.
http://www.geocities.com/cd23c/poorman.html - Jeff20b's Poorman's direct fire ignition setup (how to do the above without an extra ignitor).

Hope I've helped.

--matt

Felix Wankel

My friend had a Jacobs box on his TII. He didn't like it too much.

Jeff20B

iTrader: (13)

I think 85fb3s tried the rotarymaster or knows someone who tried it. It's a bit vague, but I think the results were not too good, similar to what Felix said.

I noticed a complete transformation of my friend's 13B going from stock to poorman's to DLIDFIS. Stock kinda had power up to 6500, poorman's had much more low end power, and kinda could rev up to 7k RPM with some power, but DLIDFIS goes up past 8k and keeps wanting to go higher. My friend actually got scared last night as he wasn't paying attention to the tach and hit 8k RPM in either 2nd or 3rd gear a little too easily.

If I had an exhaust gas analizer handy I would do the test myself going from stock to PMDFIS (poorman's) to DLIDFIS. But if my nose is any indication, dual ignitors on Leading always cleans the emissions.

I no longer worry about cops tailing me. If they can't smell it, they won't have any reason to pull me over for running a modified exhaust system

Jeff20B

iTrader: (13)

Dr Jacobs is on KVI 570AM right now!

Oh man, he recommended against his ignition system for a 5 cylinder Audi Quattro because the stock Hitachi ignition is apearantly so good. Hmm... Then he said that he's working on something that will improve the later ignitions on modern (newish) cars so it will work better than the stock ignitions of newer cars like the Quattro. I suppose a Dodge Stratus direct fire system might possibly be improved by his ignition, but I still gotta take what he's saying with a grain of salt.

He has said a few things that contradict some of the other stuff he's said so far. Is he hiding something?

He also said that reformulated gas that comes around in November can only be ignitied well by his system.

Ah, he just mentioned that all new cars will need to have low compression to lower the amount of oxides of nitrogen. This is a government mandate. Uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but a lower compression engine doesn't need a very powerful spark. He also said that his ignition system produces a spark that is talored to the amount of resistance of the spark plug. Aren't the wires part of the whole resistance of the circuit? His answer was that for security reasons, a set of plug wires in included. Hmm, that talored spark sounds to me like a common inductive spark. He has not said if his system employs a CD or inductive spark yet (I might have missed that part because I missed the very begining of the show).