I picked up my car from getting the new turbo kit put on, along with a rebuilt head and some other goodies.



so I have the car and i basicly just drive it home and park it, with plans of finish tuning etc the following day. I make sure the car turns off via turbo timer and go inside. I come out 1hr later and the damn thing is making a strange noise, i look inside and my cluster, avcr wideband, turbo timer are turning on and off rapidly. I instantly go to the kill switch and think, "great electrical gremlins."

Saturday, i get up and inspect all the wires for the turbo timer, as I figured maybe a wire got kicked and knocked a wire lose or a ground is having issues, etc. I check everything and ensured everyting was properly taped up, I checked the main relay and found that it looked good, all the soldier joints were fine.

so I have a race at 2pm, so I move to get the car going and start tuning, I zero at TPS, ensure timing is set at 16 and start tuning. At 6500 rpms i'm getting big misfires. So i adjust the BKR7e to .030 instead of .033. Same issue, WOT 14psi, misfire. I try to part trottle pass 6500 and get to 8k then the tach jumps around on me. So I figure its the ignitor, i have slew of replacements, so I change the ignitor and put in a new OEM rotor. i take the car out and boom 7k rpms. I then went to a local shop and borrowed a known working GSR distributor off a car there that runs perfectly. I put on the distributor, bypassing my external oil and then again at 7k rpms, i have misfire.

I'm mildly stumped. I put a new alternator on the car while the engine was out, could that be it?

See attached two screenshots, the first is a screenshot of the ignition misfire:


This is a datalog of the car on the dyno last year with my old t3/t4 60 trim setup on it:


I think the voltage looks low on both pulls, but last year, I never had ignition problems. This year i can't rev past 6500-7500. I changed from my full size battery to my little race battery and still had the same results, so i guess both batteries could be bad.

my guess:
1. alternator (new one is dead maybe)
2. battery
3. plug wires (they have 7k miles on them and are magnacores)

Thanks for any help you can provide. Also all grounds looked good on the car in the engine bay.

 

I see you have the same cap as I do. I had a problem with a misfire at around 7K plus. It took a while for me to figure it out, but it ended up being the coil contact tower on my MSD cap. The red spacer between the contact and the cap was rotating/moving back and forth at higher rpm due to vibration probably caused by my poly engine mount bushings. I took a piece of electrical tape to hold down the coil wire boot so it wouldn't allow it to rotate, and 95% of my misfire was eliminated. I re gapped my plugs to .028-.030" and that took care of the rest. Now she eagerly pulls to fuel cut.

 

you know that red piece on the cap has a slight crack in it and does rotate, BUT when i put on the distributor from a different car, i used a stock cap, with stock internal coil, and it still had the same misfire issue.

I've been considering buying a new MSD cap or just buying a OEM honda cap and drilling it for the external coil. Also considering the new MSD distributor, if it ever comes off back order.

thanks though

keep them coming

 

After re-reading your post, I think that having some of your electrical components turn on and off rapidly is a tell-tale sign of an electrical circuit opening and closing rapidly...my guess is its relay-related

EDIT: or voltage related...

 

I wonder about the ELD, its voltage is higher in current setup than previous, both times i had it enabled to regulate voltage. I disabled it during the misfire situation and it did the same thing.

I think of think the rapid on and off, had to do with the turbo timer constnat power wire getting bumped a little, but really no clue, I resecured all wires and the ground i use for the instrument gauges and it seems perfect.

still, there is a gremlin somewhere that developed when engine was out or due to the new alternator that was installed. That was the only change that occurred from this year to last.

 

the bouncing tech sounds like the same thing that mine did when i had a bad alt. turned out that the voltage regulator was bad.

 

any more suggestions?

 

are you getting any CEL? when we tunned a car on hondata it was doing something kinda what you are having and it turned out to be a ground on the therm housing was loose...

 

hrmm, that brings up a good point, during one good run that i was attempting to run, the CEL came on at 7500ish rpm (this was before misfire) i went to the hondalogger and checked the code and there was no error code. turned car on and off and no more code, but then misfire. Guess i'll recheck the thermostat ground. but i swear it was good.

 

bump for you man. I'm interested in hearing what the problem was. How new are those plugs? Mine was misfiring huge with only about 500 miles on the plugs.

 

bumpb for seen, help him get his car back to donkeypumping people

 

id try a new alternator and switching back to stock wires, oem wires always seem to work best from what ive seen

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Bryson &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">bump for you man. I'm interested in hearing what the problem was. How new are those plugs? Mine was misfiring huge with only about 500 miles on the plugs. </TD></TR></TABLE>

hehe, well maybe 15 miles on the BKR7E's,

then I switched over to the NGK 7173 (R56XX-8 or something basicly the #8 heatrange for the BKR7e, i can't remember the exact number) so might have 15 miles on them.

i thought maybe it wasnted colder plugs or something, as you can see i'm right around 20-21 degrees of timing at 1-bar so its not like i'm trying to push major amounts of timing.

 

try running around 18 degrees of timing and run a heat range 7 NGK

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by BoostedEG6 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">try running around 18 degrees of timing and run a heat range 7 NGK </TD></TR></TABLE>

there was no difference between the 7 & 8 range plug, i couldn't imagine one misfiring due to being too cold, i've actually heard with over 400whp, i'd need to start moving to the 8 range. I would think GT35e @ 14-16psi should get me atleast that number based on what i put down with the old 60 trim.

I've ran 20-21 degrees on t3/t67 turbo cars with similar build ups (b16 84mm bore compared to my b18c 81.5mm bore). As I'm working out of town this week, i dropped it off at the place that fabbed up the new turbo kit, so I'll try to drop by tomorrow on my way back into town and adjust the timing map some. and see if less timing will work.

Another thought that popped up was, I have a J&S ultrasafeguard within my ignition system as well, although during the misfires, it wasn't indicating that it was pulling out any timing or anything. I even raised its sensitivity, so it wouldn't pull any timing if it picked up anything.

 

here's a new twist in the gremlin story.

I get a call from the shop yesterday, he lets the car warm up and takes it out for a test drive to experience the mis-fire. WOT, 1bar and no misfire experience what so ever in the upper rpm range.

SO....

what the hell kind of little angry green gremlin do i have in my electrical system? He's going to check alternator today, but seems strange. I was thinking maybe it could be related to climate, but it was like 87 on saturday when it misfired and it was around 90 today without misfire. Only difference is that on saturday the humidity was like 180%(very high) where today it was moderate (50% or so).

I'm considering a box of matches and a gallon of 87 octane to the car...

 

HOnestly I think it is probably plug gap. I would go lower than .30, drop it to like .25-.28 and just see what happens.

 

plugs in it currently are at .028. must have missed that in orignal post.

had the bkr7e .033, to .030, then went to the 7173's to .028

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by seen4ever &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">plugs in it currently are at .028. must have missed that in orignal post.

had the bkr7e .033, to .030, then went to the 7173's to .028</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yea, my bad, I must have missed that one. Well good luck with your problem. Electrical gremlins are a pain in the ***.