Hi Honda-tech, 1st post here but been lurking for some time. Anyway. I have a 96 civic with a built b18c, 6262 turbo, e85 blah blah blah.
Anyway. I recently put on the AEM EPM COP unit with the AEM pencil coils and with the 4 channel ignitor, not running a CDI currently. Car is running pretty good other then some weird timing issues going on. Doesn't seem to take much timing under boost (13lbs e85 and only taking about 14 degrees total up top at around 8k rpm). I have synced timing properly and all that jazz.
Now I was under the impression the EPM is a falling edge sensor type? where I am confused is In the options under
setup/sensors/cam crank sensor/cam crank input setup/options -cam/crank input setup

I see the boxes checked for crank rising edge and cam rising edge

The falling edge check boxes are un-checked. Should those be checked on or not?
I understand hondas are a rising edge type sensors (stock dizzy) but I figured with the EPM the wizard would adjust that option to falling edge as well? Maybe I'm wrong and just over thinking it too much.
I setup the EPM through the wizard and nothing changed in the cam/crank input options menu. Do I need to manually adjust those settings? Or should it remain on cam and crank rising edge only?

now for my 2nd question, the jumpers. In the instructions is says to move these jumpers for the 30-1060 box
JPC1 1-2 position
JPC2 1-2 position
JPC3 1-2 position
JPC4 1-2 position
JPC5 1-2 position
JPT1 1-2 position
JPT2 1-2 position
Everywhere I read everyone says to move the JPT1 and JPT2 jumpers, nothing about the JPC jumpers, but the instructions say other wise. I followed the instructions and moved all the jumpers listed above to the 1-2 position... Did I do this right? or was I only suppose to move the JPT jumpers?

AEM (almost engine managment lol) seems really fluky on there instructions. Not sure if I got one of the older instructions or not.

Tomorrow I am going to check for timing drift in higher RPM's as I suspect that is going on, but the car just doesn't seem right above 7500rpm. RPM signal in the logs seem to spike a bit above 7500rpm (500-800rpm spikes) and when this starts to happen the car starts to lay over on power and surge. Not so much a misfire, but just more or less stop pulling, adding more timing up top doesn't seem to help either.
I've tried gaping the plugs down to .018" and still have the same issues. I've checked all the wiring, re wired it using good grounds, good connections ect. and still remain the same issues.

My 3rd question is, since I am not running a CDI currently, should I be using the CBR coils coil dwell settings? I thought I seen somewhere that the coil dwell should be set to the CBR dwell settings if your not using a CDI box. Right now I'm using the coil dwell that the AEM EPM COP unit instructions said to put it to, but it seems that is for a CDI. I could be wrong.

Really hope someone can shed some light here as I am wanting to crank the boost on this pig, but this problem is keeping me from doing so.

Like I said, the car runs, drives nice, but higher RPM the car is having issues, and the car won't take timing at all. Like I stated above, I can only cram 14 degrees total into it at 13lbs. This shouldn't be right... should it? lol.

Thanks in advance. Sorry for the long post, but I am at a loss right now trying to figure this damn thing out.

 

What plugs are you running?

Are you running non-resistor plugs?

 

I was running non resistor plugs, put resistor plugs in the car the other day and still seem to have issues.

Last night while driving home the car started to buck, back fire and die. Pulled over and popped the hood to look everything over and didn't see anything wrong. Fired the car up and it was struggling and back firing badly. I hooked the laptop up and started to log timing errors and sync tooth. Sync tooth was dropping like flies and was getting up towards 43 timing errors.

I got the car home and changed the plugs again with another set of resistor type plugs and fired the car up, car ran fine so I took it for a spin and didn't see any timing errors and sync tooth was dead on 23 the entire time.

Got back home and checked over everything and let the car cool for about an hour then went back out to fire it up and right away it was getting timing errors and dropping sync tooth again. This morning I tried to start it and it just gave me timing errors, then all of a sudden it cleared up and has been fine so far today.

I think the EPM is dying. kinda weird how it's doing this since I haven't even had the damn thing on there for not even a month yet.
Stat sync stays on the entire time. The only 2 parameters I see having issues is timing error and sync tooth, witch sync tooth is directly related to timing errors as it's just picking up timing errors from sync tooth dropping signal from the EPM.

I'm going to check over all my grounds and wiring today and if everything is fine and the car ends up doing this again, I'm sending the EPM back to AEM and have them look at it. I've been on the phone with them the past few days regarding this issue.
I forgot to mention as well, when I checked for timing drift, it was drifting advance above 6krpm like a SOB, like 10 degree drift!! I had the ignition map locked down to 15 degrees and anything above 6k it would start to drift, the higher the revs got above 6k the worse the drift got. I tried adjusting pickup delay comp but it didn't help, everything I adjust doesn't make the drift go away. If anything, it just moves it it around, never stays dead steady at 15 degrees when I have the ignition locked.
So either I'm getting a ton of noise going through the EPM through the wiring, or the EPM is dying on me. Everything that has to do with the EPM and coils/ignitor are all wired directly to the AEM EMS, the wiring is the factory wiring from AEM that came with the EPM COP kit.

 

So I fixed the issues with the EPM dropping signal this past couple of days. i redid a ton of grounds and re grounded the epm straight to sensor ground on the ems.
In hopes this would cure my serious timing drift, it didn't
So we stuck the timing light on the car and wrote down how much it drifts per RPM. This was all done with the ignition locked at 15 degrees. It always drifts advance, regardless where I set the pickup delay comp.

4000rpm 0 drift
5000rpm 5 degree drift
6000rpm 10 degree drift
7000rpm 13 degree drift
8000rpm 15 degree drift
9000rpm 17 degree drift

This is just crazy. I have owned 3 AEM equipped cars, and NEVER had any issues with any of the aem's, but this one is just crazy.

Has anyone else encountered so much timing drift before? How can this be fixed? I figured with the AEM EPM it wouldn't drift at all, but it does. So for now I adjusted the ignition map accordingly to the drift, the map looks goofy with the map saying as low as 2-4 degrees by 9k at around 21lbs of boost, add the 17 degree drift to that and it's at around 19-21 degrees. Atleast I think it is, it makes it so hard to tune this thing. Any help? Ideas?

 

overratedstyles -- did you get this resolved? any update?

 

I'm also having a problem with my aem setup just sent my epm back cause straight from the box new wasn't getting am rpm signal period

 

did you tell the the ecu to look for the epm?

 

are you pulling one coil and inserting a spark plug wire for testing timing?

 

yes we do we use a oem plug wire

 

any update on this?