SleepyEG

I finished my turbo project, and I'm running about 10psi on a B18C1, stock internals, all stock ignition.

We finished the project started it up, and it barely ran...we decided it was plugs, since I forgot the stock plugs are gapped at .045 or something wayy too huge like that. I got some BKR7E's and gapped them to 0.028.

At that point things improved, but it still misfired heavily under boost. I bought new wires from Acura, and nothing changed, but I needed them anyway, so it couldn't hurt.

I removed the cap and rotor to find the cap all burnt, and the rotor almost melted in a spot. I replaced the cap and rotor and the car felt incredibly strong. I drove like this for about 300 miles.....

The car then died semi-violently, it sounded like rod-knock, but through diagnostics, we determined the source to be a dead ignitor. The coil tested perfect. I replaced my ignitor with one from a 92 LS, and it idled fine, but misfired heavily and died under boost...I'm now going to purchase the correct ignitor, but I want to be sure it's just that the parts are old. The whole ignition, minus plugs and wires was original (110k mi.) when the turbo went on.

Just looking for comments or suggestions before wasting money and burning out more parts!

Thanks in Advance,

~james

kpt4321

As I was there when this car died, I am equally stumped by the diagnostics. All tests show that the coil is ok and it is simply the ignitor that failed, but the fact that what looks like the same ignitor (although they may have different part numbers) did not work bothers me.

Has anyone had a similar issue? I would like to see this resolved.

SleepyEG

Anybody out there??

SleepyEG

So has no one had this experience, or can no one answer the question? I know there are some ignition experts out there!

dasher

what was the measured resistance between the two terminals on the coil ... mine tested at .9 ohms and I would get absolutely no spark ... bought a new coil which tested at .8 ohms and it worked perfectly.

one more thing..if the bearings are shot in your distributor .. keep in mind moroso makes b series distributors (not remanufactured) and summit sells them for only 370...

dasher

the ls and gsr have different ignitors ... despite them looking the same they have different part numbers... methinks you have already have figured out the problem yourself.

SleepyEG

The resistance on the coil was between the given range, I believe mine tested .7x or something, I had an EE helping out...

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by dasher &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">the ls and gsr have different ignitors ... despite them looking the same they have different part numbers... methinks you have already have figured out the problem yourself.</TD></TR></TABLE>

As for this, I now think that the ls ignitor is weaker, but it's possible the part number is just because they mount differently in the distributor, so the bracket attached to the ignitor is different.

The point of this thread was to make sure that the ignitor died originally just because it was old, and not because of any other problems.

kpt4321

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by dasher &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">what was the measured resistance between the two terminals on the coil ... mine tested at .9 ohms and I would get absolutely no spark ... bought a new coil which tested at .8 ohms and it worked perfectly.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Thank you Dasher. We will need to re-test the coil today to make sure that it's not high like your was. It could very well be that the coil and AND ignitor **** the bed. That would suck.

dasher

getting out those pesky electrical gremlins can be a bitch ... helms says the resistance on terminal a and b on the coil should be between .6 and .8 ... mine read 0.9 and the distributor worked perfectly before the swap so I thought the .1 difference was merely due to fluke ... boy was I wrong...

make sure rotor retaining screw is made of a diamagnetic material (correct Acura part) and not a regular screw... sometimes people loose this when changing their rotor and thing its ok to use any screw.

SleepyEG

No, Kyles dumb. The coil tested fine....I have a new ignitor on the way from California, so by Wednesday morning I should be back on boost.

dasher

hehe... good luck

again ... make sure you are using a diamagnetic screw in the rotor

Joseph Davis

There is no functional difference between ignitors, they all run interchangeably.

I vote coil, sounds like it is arcing over internally... as combustion chamber pressures increase and it becomes more difficult to fire the plugs, the spark arcs over easiest internally.

SleepyEG

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by J. Davis &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">There is no functional difference between ignitors, they all run interchangeably.

I vote coil, sounds like it is arcing over internally... as combustion chamber pressures increase and it becomes more difficult to fire the plugs, the spark arcs over easiest internally.</TD></TR></TABLE>

How sure are you on this? I ask only because the car ran perfect, then died...and I replaced it with an LS ignitor and it idled fine, but misfired under stutter box...also, I tested the coil with the help of an EE to be sure, and everything tested perfectly within specs from the honda manual

kpt4321

JoeyD, thanks for the advice.

The part that bothers me is the fact that, first the car just died. It wouldn't start, at all, and we were not getting any spark. After replacing the ignitor with a known good part, the car seemed to run fine (I was not there for the stutterbox debacle, but it sounds like it didn't run "fine.") Regardless, it ran, which it didn't do before, and we didn't touch the coil.

Of course, it is certainly possible that the coil has the type of problem that would cause it to work intermittently.

JDavis, do you know if the coils are rated differently? We have a spare distributor, but it's from a lesser model.

Thank you for all the help.

Joseph Davis

I'm pretty sure of the ignitor situation... I have a pile of them yanked out of known good distributors that had bad coils, bad bearings, got crunched by the forklift at the local jap engine importer, etc. I just grab one as needed, and it works regardless of the dizzy I stuff it into. Tell your EE friend I said "hi," if I go back this fall I'm a year away from mine.


As far as the coil, KylieT, it was a guess based on probability. Ignitors usually fall into one of three categories: good, bad yet runs fine intermittantly, and bad won't run. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the ignitor was causing the problem you describe, it was just not the most common problem. Anytime a car diesels and/or misfires like you've described it's usually the coil, or has been on all of them I've touched. Just keep your eyes open, you're a bright guy.

SleepyEG

I got lucky and was able to return the ignitor I almost spent a ton of money on, so now I'm going to throw in a spare coil I have...do you know if all coils are created equal, as you said the ignitors are? Hopefully this will solve the problem. The really weird thing is that the spare one I threw in there, that didn't work 2 days ago, worked fine when I pulled it in the garage yesterday, it even liked a stutter box with no misfiring, however it took forever to start. Oh well, I'll let you know what happens when we change coils too..

~james


Modified by SleepyEG at 8:15 AM 5/4/2004

SleepyEG

ANyone please help!!! The car is getting worse before it gets better. I have now replaced dist., coil, and ignitor. So that's officially everything I can replace....

dasher

you've replaced the entire distributor???

kpt4321

Yes, a whole distributor from a very low mileage motor was swapped in, no change.

I think James is trying an ECU tonight.

SleepyEG

IT'S ALWAYS THE SIMPLE THINGS!

The rotor we used, although new, was not an OEM part, I put in an OEM rotor with 20k miles, but with the all important insulation on the sides of the surface, and it's like butter once again.

Moral of the story. Honda engineers do things for a reason. The wonderful engineers making parts for Autozone, do things for cost.