underpressure02

Anyone that has been following my story with my aem will know that my car has not ran for almost 3 weeks now. Here is the link to that post
https://honda-tech.com/zerothread?id=454455
After replacing my icm and now tonight my coil I try to check for spark and the car only sparks when I first turn my key on and after I let go of it when cranking. I got the car to run but it then died. My question is this.
If I pull all the plugs out and have them grounded and turn the key on it will spark without cranking and when I go to shut it off the spark is more noticable and powerful if you want to call it that. Now it will only spark where the rotor is pointing to the plug wire. So for example if the rotor is pointing to the #3 pulg wire it will spark there. I am assuming this is discharging the coil. But my question is this normal?
Also what else would cause the plug to spark when turning the ignition on and off. Could this be the cause of a bad igniton switch? Any help is appreciated. I thought my AEM was bad but since the car ran for over a min I am thinking that is not the case now.
BTW I am running a stock ignition system.

BoostedSi

dude, your having such shitty problems with that aem. I think u should send that back so you can totally make sure thats not it and cancel that out. Either way...let me know if you need anything. Sorry i couldnt have been more of a help.

underpressure02

No problem. But do you think it is the AEM b/c the car did start and run./ BUt what is really wierd is the fact that it only sparks when i turn the key on and off and not when cranking. I know with american cars this usually means the ignition switch is going bad.

boosted hybrid

You started the car and it ran on the stock LS ecu. How much more evidence do you need to point towards the AEM.

BoostedSi

Same thing i was thinking

underpressure02

Just wanted to make sure. Jeff are you on aim tonight?

underpressure02

ttt

Hybrid Invasion

im having the exact same problem, but i was thinking it was the igniter that was bad but i dont know how to test it. I dont have an aem ecu, i have a mugen spec pr3 ecu and it blinks once when i turn the ignition on. can anybody tell me how to test the igniter and if its not that, what else it could be?

JRSCCivic98

If you guys would read all the post that people with AEM's wrote you'd know that AEM's have a problem with the coil drivers going bad. Send that POS back and get another one under warranty or get a different standalone altogether.

underpressure02

actually my coil drivers did not go bad. It was my dwell settings in my aem. Don't generalize but it is not alwyas the problem. But I had to send my aem back for them to determine what was wrong with it.

underpressure02

When I get home I will post how to test the ignitor and coil. YOU bascially test the wires to make sure there is power going to them. Also you test the coil by reading out the resistance. I do not have my helms with me now but I will post later. ALso if you tach is jummping that is a good sign of you ICM going bad.

Hybrid Invasion

wel i replaced my igniter and the same thing is happening, so its not that. and the coil is heating, so it is working.

underpressure02

are you getting any spark at all?
Do you have an aftermarket alarm that has a ign cut built into it?
Can you post what you have done so far and excatly what is going on with your car?

JRSCCivic98

Man, I feel for you guys with AEMs. I got my PowerFC in the mail and all I did was put it in the car, change the injector correction to match my 440s and bring up the fuel to max (just to be safe til dyno) at boost readings in MAP sensor correction. DONE... car cranked right up and I drove w/o any probs. It was by no means making mad power w/o being tuned, but drove a lot better then it did with my RR regulator and stock injectors.

If you were where AEM is you could take that **** to them and throw the car in their lap to get it going.

Good luck...

underpressure02

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by JRSCCivic98 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Man, I feel for you guys with AEMs. I got my PowerFC in the mail and all I did was put it in the car, change the injector correction to match my 440s and bring up the fuel to max (just to be safe til dyno) at boost readings in MAP sensor correction. DONE... car cranked right up and I drove w/o any probs. It was by no means making mad power w/o being tuned, but drove a lot better then it did with my RR regulator and stock injectors.

I had no problems with my aem until I upgraded to version .94. I can not tell from your post if you are trying to be an *** but it sounds like it to me. If I did not want any problems or head aches I would have gone with hondata but since I like ti figure things out I went with AEM. I also feel that AEM offers alot more options then other ems and it is plug and play. With all new products there will be problems and in the end they will be fixed and worked out. IT is all part of the game.
Now back to the orginal post. I would like some more details on what you have done to your car so that I could help to figure out why you are getting no spark.
If you were where AEM is you could take that **** to them and throw the car in their lap to get it going.

Good luck...</TD></TR></TABLE>

Hybrid Invasion

im getting no spark when we try to crank the motor. so far i've done a b16a swap into a 90 crx, the guy that had it before me had it in a 92 civic hatch, so i had to convert back to obd0. we did the timing on it, so thats right. I bought the HAsport DX-SiR conversion harness for it, did all the wiring to the ecu exactly as the instructions say, doublechecked it, checked all my grounds, and the ECU is a chipped pr3 ECU which is getting power. went to start it, it turns over but it wont start. What the mechanics and i were able to determine was this:
one. No spark. Only when the key is in the on position, and when you turn the key to the off position. a little spark and thats it.
two. its not the igniter, i replaced it.
Three. the coil is heating up when trying to start, so its not that.
four. i'm getting a code 15, which was described to me as "Ignition Output Signal". nobody knows what this code is caused by, how to fix it, etc.
five. it was determined today that the #4 injector is constantly on and dumping fuel into the engine, thus flooding it with fuel almost instantly. why that is, i don't know. He said he thinks its a wiring problem. Sounds about right to me, but where in gods good holy name would I start????
I am completely lost on what to do next, and people down here dont know their *** from their elbow when it comes to troubleshooting swapped cars, so i have no clue as to where to go from here. if i keep it at the shop, theyre just going to end up charging me through the *** to check all the wiring because of how long it takes. Someone please help me, i am so ******* frustrated right now and if i dont get my car back running soon, im gonna lose my damn job. help!

JRSCCivic98

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by underpressure02 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I can not tell from your post if you are trying to be an *** but it sounds like it to me.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Umm, no... no asses here... I was just saing how much of a hassle it was putting my PowerFC in. I have a friend that got an AEM for his Prelude swapped Accord and the thing wouldn't even start with the AEM but would with the Honda ECU. Don't take this the wrong way, but updates to the firmware on the ECU indicates problems being hacked out by AEM. With that said it might be worth your while to see if you can flash back to the previous version if the AEM lets you do that. It's a computer like any other computer. If it ain't broke don't fix it. Don't be so quick to flash to latest firmware w/o letting some time go by to see if adverse conditions appear from other people. Usually you don't need a new flash if everything is working fine... just when you're having problems.

Please don't take this so personally... It's not intended like that.

I hope you get your stuff streight... BTW, if you can flash back to previous version, you might want to try that if AEM supports this. Some do some don't.

Peace

93LSivic

Just with any standalone, you have to have an idea of how a car works. I think this is the case with most people bitching and whining about the EMS not starting their cars. WTF people, Im so tired of hearing this---hondata has been around a lot longet then ems, but start up issues were there when it was first introduced to the market too. AEM doesnt have a problem, its the SEU ---stupid end user.

I will gaurantee that your probem with your car underpressure is that the car is ****** hacked together........sorry to put it bluntly. I would rewire the whole engine compartment and start with a clean slate. I told you this 10 minutes after looking around under your hood the first time I met you, and your car.

BoostedSi

why do people bitch so much about their cars not starting the first time they put the aem in? Who da hell really cares, even if it did start its gonna run like ***. So y does it really matter if it even starts. After its tuned, it'll start and run fine so whats all the bitching about?

its always about hondata this, hondata that...

93LSivic

Im not saying anything about hondata. Just simply saying that when hondata was new it was hard to get a good base map too....along with power fc, fast, haltek, etc.

underpressure02

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by 93LSivic &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Just with any standalone, you have to have an idea of how a car works. I think this is the case with most people bitching and whining about the EMS not starting their cars. WTF people, Im so tired of hearing this---hondata has been around a lot longet then ems, but start up issues were there when it was first introduced to the market too. AEM doesnt have a problem, its the SEU ---stupid end user.

I will gaurantee that your probem with your car underpressure is that the car is ****** hacked together........sorry to put it bluntly. I would rewire the whole engine compartment and start with a clean slate. I told you this 10 minutes after looking around under your hood the first time I met you, and your car.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Since you gaurantee that the problem with my car is it is hacked together. I will reply that you know nothing about the aem unit or what you are talking about. The dwell settings were not correct b/c of the base map that was loaded and the main board was bad on the aem. Maybe you should rethink what you say before you try and blast someone on their car or their knowledge.

BoostedSi

did you get your car started chad?

prophet

chad's car was T U N E D by an AEM recommened dealer/tuner. Not sure what the process is but, supposidly DRT has tuned the AEM a few times (supposidly very good at it according to AEM). The first few times chad ran the EMS his motor blew (it was TUNED and installed by DRT), which Adam determined to be the map sensor. He later upgraded to the v94 firmware b/c he wanted to check out the auto tuning feature as well as some of the other updates that proved to be more stable (he was running like v73 or something before) and had a better startup.

I'm not sure why his car has tons of bad luck but, he did not have the ignition problem until AFTER the upgrade. There are people on here that have had the same problem, so if its SEU, there are quite a bit of them on Honda-tech. I personally NEVER had this problem with my EMS, pretty much it was plug and play for me. The board went out twice on me and that is when AEM sent me back a brand new unit. I've sat there for over 1 hour with JP in the freezing cold trying to trouble shoot it and it winded up being the EPROM, both times it was very cold out and both times nothing was touched (once i had the turbo timer counting down and the other time i just turned the car off and turned it back on). AEM is promising a better firmware which claims to eliminate the problem that I have had as well as a few others.

Yes the EMS is new, Yes it's basically going to woop *** for price/product, but it is still in its infancy stage. There are bound to be bad batches and glitches in the software that AEM didn't intend to cause.

Hopefully that cleared a few things up.

underpressure02

Prophet you are right my car was tuned at drt but lasted alot longer then a few drives. My car ran about 8 months and the only reason I cracked a sleeve is b/c the igntion timing was way to agressive. And i was boosting 14 psi with stock sleeves. This is the first import I have ever owned and never claimed to be an expert by anymeans. But I am learning fast.

But I guess to try and help a fellow h-ter out you have to know everything like 93lsivic does and try to cut people down when in reality you have no clue what you are talking about.

I am glad there are alot of helpful people on this board b/c without them no one would ever figure out any problems. And everyone would try to blame it on the install job in your car instead of focusing on the real problem.

And 93lsivic did you ever figure out your electrical problem or did you just bandaid the situation by upgrading to an all msd ignition system.

93LSivic

Hey man, I can understand you taking offense to me somewhat (but not really) bashing your car--and your understanding of it. But really man, since you bought the car in the stage its in you really dont have any kind of knowhoe of the technical level the people were who performed the work. I was simply stating that it was hacked together and it was probably something simple....hell a poor grounding point could cause troubles like this. Can you actually tell me that I didnt find a broken connector at your map sensor and that was why the ems wasnt getting a true reading....and it took me a whole 5 seconds to figure that out. It seems like you come off as a knowledgable person, but you didnt even have the incentive to diagnose the simplest of problems. You constantly kept asking for advice and seemingly didnt listen to a word anyone had to say....

Im really not trying to be a dick here, more helpfull then anything. I would help you diagnose your problem, but like I said before, I truly believe that your problem lies outside of the EMS unit.

Oh, and to answer your final question. Did I bandaid the problem I had, no. I replaced the inferior honda pieces with upgraded aftermarket parts...simply put. My ICM and coil have been out of factory spec each time I checked them (hmm, maybe you should learn about this) and for some reason have been just been enough to run the car..until they finally gave up. I really didnt see a reason in paying over $100 to replace an ICM that are known for goin bad and also replacing a small somewhat inadequate coil for my purposes to keep the ignition system stock. So I decided I would upgrade the whole setup for less than it would cost me to put it back to stock......and get better performance from it.

Anything else you need?