What ever you have, any suggestions bring it to the table, I would consider pretty much anything now... I spent last week trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with my car. I cant seem to get my timing straight... or what else.. I dont know but this car doesnt seem to behave right and respond to some known settings. These are the symptoms.. First timing: I lock timing at -5 put it at 65 angle and its not even close on trailing 1. mine is about 35 to align with the mark. Ok its aligned then I remove the lock car doesnt like it , idle very rough.... then I change it to 55 and start idling better, raising the rpm and sounded better. Another thing is when I check where the mark is with both leading they are at different place... sometimes they align ... Now trailing wont fire when plug in the engine, when I take them out the y spark.. I guess they flood... when remove them I see oil after few turns of the crank. I though they have bad grounding so I added some extra grounding around sparks (nothing) Now trigger wiring.... I pretty sure I wired right... common ground for home and trigger .. trigger yellow (left looking from front) and home green (right). they used to be close to coils then I put them little father from coil pack ( little better I would say. Coils are ok, ignitor seems to be fine .. maybe bad ECU or there is something Im missing, maybe wire not hooked up or... for the coils i wired ign1 leading, ign3-tr1 and ign4- tr2... power to the coils is stock wire. I have one pic that shows some logging. For the fuel map I copied all the values from the base stock map the miltiplied with 550 then divided with my current size 1000CC for the primaries.

E8 Haltech
6x1000cc (2xprimaries and 4xsecondary)
stock ignition
single turbo

 

What is the tooth offset, trigger/home edges, trigger/home gain/filter, ignition system/setup, etc?

3rd gen or 2nd gen?

 

Tooth offset 11
Signal edges falling (home and trigger)
Filter 1 (home and trigger)
gain 3 on both
Spark mode wasted spark
constant charge 4.5
ign spark edge falling
trailing spark edge falling
dwell mode constant charge
dwell mode trailing constant charge

Few things I'm planing to check going forward, feel free to add anything to the list.

-Install ground cable from the battery to the block. ( my battery is in the trunk, no ground cable directly from the battery to the block, currently just the body for the ground loop)

-Install new trigger cables! ( Currently I used the haltech trigger cable and ran all the way to the sensors, it seems this cable is weak to noise)... Ill try stock cable

-Get MSD 8509 magnetic signal converter

-Check the Gap between the magnets and the pulley. Ive heard this might be an issue. The gap should be in between 30 0000s and 80 000s? Im not sure these are the right numbers.

 

Ok, some improvement. By installing ground cable from the battery to rotor housings and little fuel tuning I got car sounding much better. I re-did timing but this time I did 10 tooth offset and 65 angle, it seems ok now, log file shows some stuttering that worries me. I didnt install MSD 8509 yet but that is next probably on my list plus new trigger wiring. Another thing is that my trailings wont spark when in the engine, if I take them out and ground they spark.... weird. Im pretty sure they are grounded correctly. I dont know how trailing split map works but its 1 degree at all times... I have HKS twin power as well... Here the log...

 

Forget trying to log trigger and/or home count. They won't tell you anything. The sample rate of the logging is too slow. Do log "trigger at last home", this should be a constant 12. Any variance from that is a trigger issue.

 

Thanks man!... I logged that as well and it seems to be stable 12v. What else should I check for stuttering and no spark on trailing?

 

On my 20b with Fd trigger set-up, I also had to set my tooth offset at 10 and the initial angle at 65. Only thing is when I zeroed the timming, I had to crank the angle all the way up to 81 to get my #1 leading to alighn with the timming mark. I hope I don't run into problems later on with it set-up like that. All my gains and filters are at 0.

 

Turns out I'm an idiot and can't read properly. LOL! I always felt I had timing issues after zeroing my timing. I followed the steps from the tips and set-up page and couldn't figure out why I had to raise the trigger angle all the way up to 81 to line the pointer. So I went to the "Hitman" site and miss read 1 important piece of info (luckely I printed out the instructions since that page doesn't work anymore). Back to that in a sec. All this time when I originally zeroed my timing, I lined the pointer and thinking it was -5. Well I got the engine in the car and am finally getting ready to drive it so I start researching timing advance and find this nice little post here from Judge Ito on the TeamFcs3.org

Then I go back to the Hitman instructions and they clearly read "install timing light on "T1" I originally used "L1" to line up the mark. Damn I feel dumb. This means my engine was 15 degrees advanced on all timing maps. Cranking map and idle was set at 5 degrees so I was actually at 20. Hell no wonder I had kick back sometimes. My idle was still fairly smooth (guess the 20bs extra torque made the difference). I will correct this tomorrow. I'm just glad I caught this mistake before I started driving.

 

Correction on the above. My engine was not 15 degrees advanced. I got it backwards. It was 15 degrees retarded. My kick back problem when starting is due to me having a weak battery with a dead cell (low cranking amps).