Well I can't remember ever being this flustered with a car. This is a long post and I really just want things to work.

My Setup: 88 FC, with s5 engine. Stock turbo, E6X.

Story: A few days ago my trailing coils quit on me, along with my tach. Well I tested all the wires I could and still had 12v through the test port where the trailing coils are installed. I was in a rush to get my car running to go to work and all so I decided to go ahead and try Ls1 Coils which my roommate had available rather then having to wait to order and get some stock trailing coils shipped. I get the 4 ls1 coils wired properly and then the problems arise.

Halwin: I have the e6x in direct fire mode, with 4 ms time the coils. Have tried distributor mode also, which was also a failure.

Problem: I got both leading to work, and one trailing. The other trailing will spark when I turn the ignition on but will not spark at all after that. It is obvious it is not receiving signal from the ecu. The ignition wire is purple but by pulling up the diagrams for e6x and e6k neither one has a purple wire so I am not to sure which ignition wire it is. Any recommendations on what may cause one coil to not work properly. The coils are good and where in working order on my roommates car just yesterday.

Other concerns: I got the car barely running on the leading and one trailing and the tachometer is still not functional. is there a certain wire I need to hook up to the ls1 coils for that to work also.

Along the process of wiring the coils up the test plug quit reading any voltage. So I had to switch the switched power to a different power source. I am slightly concerned this may have harmed something else. this wire is yellow.

While trying to get it to start and continually crank on it it seemed to intake backfire. The engine did slightly move and hope this did not cause any damage.

 

Well, by the sounds of it you have one problem that existed which is still an issue. If the trailing coil wasn't firing (the stock ones....) the tach wouldn't work as the tach is driven by the trailing coil's operation....

Did you check for continuity between the IGN wires and the plug at the ECU? could be a bad connection or broken wire.

Wouldn't the car run on just stock leading coils? I've ran the car and driven it like that for various reasons in the past, but if everything else is working properly and you just subtract trailing spark from the equation - the engine should still run 80% fine.

I don't believe you can drive the tach off an Ls1 coil. you'll need to use an aux out as a tach output and connect it to the tach's signal wire on the stock trailing coil harness.

I have no idea on settings in Halwin for LS1 coils, but Claudio has a good post somewhere on them which is quite in depth.

 

I have gotten the car to run on just leading but it really struggles and does not like to run.

I really thought the tach could run off LS1 coils, hmm. Which wire near the coils is the tach signal wire anyhow?

I have visually inspected the wires but have not taken it all the way to the ecu, I assume they are connected because with all the signal wires I tested it would read nothing and when I turned the car on (without turning it over) the voltage would jump .02 volts. Which shows it has some very minor voltage coming from the ecu.

 

I have been reading and am slightly concerned that maybe an ignition driver has gone out on my ecu. If that where the case and I am currently using ignition driver 1, 2, and 3. Could I somehow replace the damaged ignition driver with ignition 4. I am a newbie and really trying to learn

 

did we actually verify that ign1 works?
as classicauto said, the car should run perfectly fine on IGN1 alone, smooth enough for you to not even notive the difference until you start boosting. in fact, i cruised around in my FD on just leadings for a week when i had the random direct fire problem with my e8.

 

yea ignition one is working cause the leading spark consistently.

 

The problem was the haltech was left in toggle mode. I ended up not using them because of my power level, but that was causing the problem.