For the last few days my 20B has been running pretty rough. My water temps started going up, and after checking the cooling system I put a timing light on the plug wires to verify their operation.

Five of the six wires gave me a good reading. The L1 was showing no light at all. I swapped the connectors on the L1 and T1 coils to verify whether it might just be a bad coil, but the coil with the L1 connector still wasn't firing. We hooked a meter up to the wires to check for power, ground and continuity across the length of the harness and everything checked out fine.

We then stuck a plug in the plug wire and turned the car over. Oddly, there was a spark; however, when we put everything back together the car still idled roughly. Being the end of the day, I started off for home, and the car would ;bog down under load unless I was VERY gentle with the throttle. I pulled over and double checked the connector to the coil, making sure that it was fully seated. The car seemed to be a bit smoother, and it didn't give any trouble when I pulled back out into traffic. About a mile or so up the road, it bogged down yet again under more load and throttle.

My questions are this:
1) Is it possible that even though everything spec'ed out on a meter, I'm still getting an intermittent spark or signal at the coil?

2) Is there a specific or known problem that might give me spark when I'm turning the car over but not under load?

3) Is it more likely that it's the control unit itself?

FWIW, my setup is the E11 running to a set of LS-1 coils. It has run fine since I got it from j9fd3s up until now. The car ran fine before I pulled the manifolds to get them powdercoated, and nothing was touched or changed in the interim.

Does anyone have any thoughts or insight? I don't want to have to send the ECU off except as a last resort, especially if it turns out to be something much simpler.

Thanks!

Reese

 

First thing to know, was the plug you used to test the spark plug wire different from the one in the motor that is fowling up or the same plug?

Second, are the coil connector pins correctly seated? i've had old connector pins move back from their position thus not making contact with the other pin, or even putting the connector it self together the wrong way too.

Other than that might it be the coil itself or even the sparkplug wire. I cant think of anything else.

 

OK, update. I started the car yesterday to verify timing and a few other things. This time I got spark. Unfortunately, once the car got up to operating temp, I stopped getting anything at all.

I checked the coil once again by swapping the trailing wire onto it, and it checked out fine. I'm about to send the unit back to Haltech to get checked because I'm at my wit's end right now. Does this new development help any with figuring out he problem?

Cliff's notes:
I get a spark reading with a timing light on the L1 coil until the car warms up, and then there is nothing.

Reese

 

You bought this computer used from j9fd3s right? I believe he complained about a similar issue with the e11v2 when he owned it.

By chance, do you know what the build date of your computer is? I'm trying determine whether I want to use an E11 on my project car. If this is a reoccuring problem I think I may go another route.

 

Unfortunately, no. The is a brand new ECU. I'm just using his harness. I'm going to try to contact Haltech today to see if they have any insight. I'll check the build date this afternoon.

Reese

 

Any of my troubleshooting questions helped at all??

 

Claudio, I tried checking the things you suggested to no avail. With the car running, I pulled the L1 connector off the coil and checked to see if it was getting power and had a good ground. Both checked out fine with a test lamp, so it has to be the signal wire OR the ECU that is causing the problem. Tomorrow I'm going to run a completely new wire for the L1 signal. If it works, then obviously my wiring has been damaged from heat or something. If it doesn't work, I'll be sending the ECU to Haltech for a checkup.

Blah, I hate downtime.

Reese

 

Sound like the ECU is overheating. Have you checked its temp when it quits working?
If so, might be a short somewhere in the harness or insufficient ECU cooling.

 

Any updates?

 

OK, now I'm a bit perturbed. I was getting power and good ground on the L1 wiring, but no signal so I decided to run a new signal wire to check that.

I broke the stupid 34-pin connector that goes into the ECU! How in the hell are you supposed to assemble/disassemble them? The whitedivider/honeycomb thing inside it is what screwed me up when trying to put it back together. Now that I broke the connector, I can't even test to see if my jumper wire will work!

Can anyone give some insight about these things? I haven't found ANYTHING online about them.

Reese

 

Resse,

Have you made any headway in solving your problem?

 

sounds like dwell time isn't set properly for the coils you're running.

 

Most of the problems I was having with the E-11 was solved using the build 28 firmware with 1.59 software.