mgags7

Ok now for the 2nd time in a month, I have managed to fry another distributor. Same situation both times, cutout open, ripping hard to about the top of 3rd gear, then instead of letting off and putting it into 5th gear, I let off and the engine just dies....I pop the hood and there sits one of my MSD spark wires dangling loose, disconnected from the distributor cap.

Last time I switched out the entire guts from an f22 distributor into my p13 housing and it was working good for a while, but this time I'm fresh out of donor distributors, and frankly, frest outta $$ to be fixing **** like this....

So I pull out the trusty multimeter and get to testing, first i test the ICMs ( i now have 3 sitting here), and I get consistent resistence readings for all 3, between the first two terminals(starting from the right, then the 2nd to right) I get about 3.18 kilo-ohms , and then between the last one on the front, and the bent-down terminal on the side, I get about 2.18 kilo-ohms....and thats completely constant for all the ICMs, so I doubt they are the problem.

So then I test the coils, the helms says that between terminal A (+) and terminal B (-), there should be between .6 and .8 ohms resistence, on all 3 here, i get about .8, so that seems to be in spec. But then the spec for resistence between term A (+) and the secondary connector (out to dist), there should be between 13.2 kilo-ohms and 19.8 kilo-ohms(I had to steal that spec from a civic helms bc i have internal coil)...on all the coils I have sitting here read somewhere between 9.5 and 10.5 kilo-ohms, which is low.

Honestly I think I just need a new coil here, but I firstly would like to figure out if something internal is blowing the coil out, or if it blows when the plug wire pops off. My only thoughts are that my tune could be way off and doing funky stuff with the ignition system, howard @ RLZ tuned it, and though hes no expert tuner, I believe he can get the job done. As soon as I can get it running again I'm going to datalog the ignition advance and the injector duty cycle and all, I know for a fact that the duty cycle gets near to if not above 100% at times....

But tuner-guys, can too much/little ign. timing cause something like this to happen...remember its pretty much always after ripping it hard up to about 7600 rpm and then letting off completely....

Do you think zip-ties will hold the MSDs on solidly enough or should I look into some NGK wires??

Thanks guys
Matt

oh and if anyone wants to drive my *** around until I fix the car be my guest, pm me lol

98vtec

i had the same problem when i had msd's. I'd get on it and the plug would come off the cap and since i was coming down from 7600 rpms, 3 cylinders firing is going to be able to hold it at idle. Just died. Never had the coil problem tho.

vinuneuro

Why not OEM with all the ignition?

mgags7

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by vinuneuro &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Why not OEM with all the ignition?</TD></TR></TABLE>

honestly i might just to end this ****, im sick of it

98vtec

kick its *** seabass

Rosko

iTrader: (1)

what are you tuning with?

whats the compression ratio, and whats the plug gap set at?

Mykizism

OEM is good stuff u should switch back

mgags7

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Rosko &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">what are you tuning with?

whats the compression ratio, and whats the plug gap set at?</TD></TR></TABLE>

stock jdm 10.6:1 cr, plug gap preset denso iridium, tuned on hondata s200

mgags7

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 98vtec &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">kick its *** seabass</TD></TR></TABLE>

lol yea rly....

anyways I just found a really good article on it which makes good sense to me, when the wire pops off, it forces the coil to operate at max output, which according to that article can be as high as 60,000 volts, creating some sort of tunneling or such that fries the insides of the coil.....either way it now makes sense to me why the coil burns when the wire pops off....

now I would really like to know why that damn wire pops off.....it can't just be the shitty manufacturing of the MSD wires, it has to have something to do with the ignition timing or something either at high rpm or when I let off suddenly.....

anyone know a good place to get some NGK wires??

hrm....lookin for a good set of MSD wires??

mgags7

well I was right, the coil was bad....I got another one outta a junk distributor and the resistance was 16.5 kilo-ohms, put that in she started right up....

Hawkze_2.3

So it was probably the MSD wires? Seems like nothing they do for imports is any good at all....well except for the full Pro-billet distributor.

I'd get NGKs from http://www.hondaautomotiveparts.com. Just order a stock set for your engine and you'll get NGKs.

mgags7

lol so if i buy a new set of wires from majestic I'll get the same thing as if I bought them from an aftermarket site, minus the blue??

good stuff, thanks hawk

vinuneuro

It'll be about $15-20 more because unlike buying the NGK wires from a non-Honda dealer, you'll have to get the coil wire seperately from the plug wire set.

mgags7

I'm internal coil so I dont need the coil wire....but yeah I was looking, they do a set of all of them with the little clips and all for like $50....good deal, and I'll be able to get at least 50 for the set of msd wires....

v4lu3s

As far as I know stock wires aer Sumitomo brand, but they work well.

Hawkze_2.3

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by v4lu3s &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">As far as I know stock wires aer Sumitomo brand, but they work well.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yeah, now that I think about it you could probably end up with a couple diffrent brands if you order OEM wires.... I have gotten NGKs before though.

mgags7

either way its not like i'm gonna lose hp from it lol....no big deal...

you guys think zipties could hold the wires on hard enough.....i'm scared to even find out, but my freakin velocity stack is going on tonight and i'm gonna wanna get on it....

vinuneuro

There's a reason the wire is popping off; if it's kept on using force and needs to pop of for whatever reason, bad things might happen .

Rosko

iTrader: (1)

I think I read something about this long ago, but now I cant find anything to back it up. Basically it was if there was a weak ground on the cylinder head, or the wrong plug gap, or a crappy mixture in the cylinder then the spark couldnt jump the gap. Now you got all that electricity building up in the wire with no place to go so it pops itself off the distributor.

Its sort of the same scenario with you're coil like you said. When the wire is off its forced to soak up all that extra energy that should've been sent to the plug.

I'm sure its your wire coming off causing the coil to go, but one more issue to think about is rotor phasing. If you're timing is so wild that it goes out of the range of the rotor, then the spark will either jump from the cap to the rotor as it goes by or will miss it completly and once again the coil will soak up the energy. At low rpm the cap and rotor should be making contact at the trailing end of the rotor and as the ignition advances the contact point should move towards the leading edge. I'm not sure how you go about setting that up with an s200 and like I said I doubt thats the problem you're having but thats the only issue I can see that would be tuning related.

98vtec

yea, theres obviously some "burst" of current that is popping the wire off. I could only imagine the internal damage of the dizzy if that "burst" wasnt able to relieve itself

mgags7

rosko i completely understand that, but we tuned off the stock ignition base timing, and i believe that the rotor has enough room to compensate for the advance present, though i would like to datalog then do a little trig and figure that out

good point though

i really think its the tune here thats off, again i really need to datalog all this, but the injectors do go over 100% duty cycle, and that could be leaning me out bigtime, which may have something to do with this.....

datalog coming soon

and i'm gonna retune soon also, as soon as i get some $$ in my pocket....

98vtec

does hondata use fuel multipliers? If they do, its possible that your duty cycles arent being formulated correctly. I can't see you maxing out 345cc injectors with stock internals. Whats your total timing at right now? If i remember correctly, i finished with mine at 29.5*.

mgags7

if the datalog is working right, the timing gets up to like 44* or something like that....

hondata does use multipliers, but i haven't looked into a setting yet, im gonna check next time i 'log .....

that stuff will be up around 11 tonight *probably*

98vtec

holy expletive. Theres no way you are running 44* of timing. You would be detonating all over the place.

mgags7

k then im making SURE that i'm mistaken tonight.....