308 ignition problem

ken thanks for the tip on the oil. maurice: tell me more about the crane ignition system. regards, jon s.

 

I was hoping that someone could take pictures of the coils setup on their car for help in wiring them back after the wires came off of mine. The excerpt below is from a post of mine in the "Heater hoses in a 309" thread.


"Another problem is I had to remove the two coils to install some fuel lines to the drivers fuel tank and I forgot to mark which wires went where in case some fell off. Well they did, so in laymans terms which wire goes where. I searched the archives and found plenty of discussion but no real picture on what goes where. Most of the wires are yellow except for two green ones. Any simple way to wire these would be helpful. And while your at it could you verify which of the fuel level sending unit wires (The red w/black stripe or the violet one is connected where) Which one is connected closer to the firewall?"

Thanks for the help,

Philip

 

phil: looking from the engine towards the cols the low voltage tabs going from left to right could be numbered 1, 2, 3 ,4. 1 and 3 should have a yellow jumper and another yellow wire (ign +) to any of the extra tabs on either 1 or 3. the green wire goes to tab 2 and the yellow/black wire goes to tab 4. as for the fuel guage try them one way and if the needle on the guage pegs hard empty, reverse them. regards, jon s.

 

Jon the system is very easy and basic.You need two crane XR700 modules.The chopper goes in the distributor and replaces the points which is all hidden.The original coils are kept.The two modules can either be fitted in the engine bay in a place that gets the least amount of heat or in the boot.On the GT4 I have mine in the engine bay in the rear guard passenger side(right hand drive car) opposite where the water header tank would be hidden out of view.The overall look is quite stock and its made a huge difference to the way my car runs.I was continually fouling plugs going from colder to hotter and experimenting with rejetting.I would also get a high rev hesitation and thats all gone.I would reccomend it to anyone having the same problems.Here is a link to a kit although I didn't get mine from here its basically the same one.http://www.importperformanceparts.net/imports/crane-xr700.html

 

jon doesn't have a GT4. He doesn't have a carbed 308 either. He doesn't have points. He already has an electronic ignition. He could replace the digiplex/distributor system with a multiple coil direct fire system (motec, electromotive, etc), but I don't think the crane xr700 is an option.

 

wolftalk is correct, but the electromotive is a tec-2 in my old 635 bmw that now is turbo charged and twice as fast as the 308. i haven't been a super fan of electromotive. they weren't real helpful with tuning problems, the system is in the engine compartment and supersensitive to moisture, and lastly i went through 4 mag pickups that died from moisture (they never offered to replace one for free). having said that i know a lot of people are enthusiastic about the current ign system (eg birdman's recent thread) and i will call nick forza and see what he has to say. i ordered the new rotors from ricambi (quite reasonable and dan seems on top of things) but if i buy new ditributor caps the current fiasco will run into more money than an electromotive system and i still have to live with 35 year old marelli technology that could fail again - buying digiplexes is a killer. jon s.

 

boy am i stupid. the nice red taylor spiro pro wires came today and before i installed them i called nick. he says the new elctromotive systems are much more reliable and with the ecu in the trunk pretty bullet proof. meanwhile being a stubborn and cheap lithuanian i pulled out the plug extenders one more time to check resistance and look at them one more time sure enough the outsides still look new and show no signs of burn through. however, when i looked inside 3 of the extenders had what appeared to be fine rust running down one side. obviously not rust but fine tracking , probably from when i yanked on the leads the night the car died (which by the way was plain stupid since even the early pointless ign systems have ahigh enough voltage to defibrillate you; ie stop your heart if your'e relly unlucky). any way the extenders cleaned up easily and when the new rotors come i'll reinstall everything and let you know. but i'll bet anything that's where the fine miss was coming from. the take home message is the extenders don't have to burn through to misfire. regards, jon s. p.s. if that doesn't fix theproblem i refuse to throw $400 into new dist caps - it's on to electromotive.

 

Jon, good talking to you today, as I said in our conversation, you cannot compare an old TEC 2 design for the early 90’s with an XDI or TEC 3 set up, that would be like comparing a original Apple PC to one made today.

Hopefully you have found the problem & chances are you actually did for now, the issue is that one day when a Digiplex fails & if I does so under start up & bucks the engine backwards & jumps the cam timing, it will get expensive. It has happened quite a few times over the years I have been in business.

In opinion a Digiplex 2 valve car is a ticking bomb & you will spend $$$$$ if a failure happens under start up. For those of you who are using a hall type unit, crane etc with a dual dist set up or an MSD type CD box, here is the difference

Remove your distributor, and never look back. The XDI uses Electromotive’s patented direct fire ignition and it’s high-resolution crank position sensing to produce the most accurate and most powerful ignition available in the aftermarket.

The Direct Ignition Advantage
A "Direct Fire" ignition fires the spark plugs directly from the coils and not through a distributor cap and rotor. This is accomplished by using multiple coils, each with two spark terminals. The coil terminals are connected to the spark plugs, allowing one cylinder to fire on compression while its companion cylinder fires simultaneously on exhaust. Open spark gaps in the rotor and cap are eliminated, making wear and moisture problems a thing of the past.
What sets XDI apart is the ability to charge multiple ignition coils at the same time. This increased dwell time means that full spark energy is available over the entire RPM range (up to 9600 at 12 volts). Unlike Capacitive Discharge systems that only put out one very short spark, the XDI puts out a full energy, long burning spark at your highest and most critical engine speeds. Long burn times assure effective burning of even lean fuel mixtures.
The brain of the XDI includes dual digital microprocessors using patented spark algorithms (patent number RE 34,183), which takes the electrical signal from the crankshaft sensor, identifies the two missing teeth and then keeps track of the remaining 58 teeth. The XDI determines engine speed and computes the spark advance from your knob settings. Setting the timing advance curve is a simple task that anyone can understand.
In addition to synchronizing and firing the plugs at the correct advance angle, the XDI also computes the exact dwell to produce 9 amps of coil current. Coil charging is measured dynamically, so changes in RPM, battery voltage, or temperature are all accounted for on every spark. This corrects any errors that are caused by battery voltage or coil temperature changes and insures maximum spark energy.

High Resolution Single-Crankshaft-Sensor Decoding
Some OEM direct ignition systems use both a crankshaft and a camshaft sensor assembly, making the system more complicated and more expensive than it needs to be. Other systems use low resolution, four to ten tooth trigger wheels on either the crankshaft or camshaft; these are not enough teeth to assure that the coils are firing without timing errors. The XDI solves these problems with a single, high resolution, 60-minus-2-tooth crank trigger wheel. This affords resolution unheard of in any other electronic ignition available today, offering spark accuracy of ¼ degree of crankshaft rotation. This accuracy makes the system ideal for the most demanding engines.


Others may claim ¼º degree accuracy, but without this accurate crankshaft position information, they’re just wishing.
Every Engine Control system from Electromotive uses multiple ignition coils and advanced, automatically adjusting dwell circuits to assure the coils are fully charged every time. The powerful spark of this patented system delivers this full spark energy directly to the plugs without misfires. Unlike multi-spark CD systems that from around 3000 RPM just give you a single very short duration spark, Electromotive puts a full 150mJ of spark energy to the plugs with a spark duration more than ten times the duration of a CD spark from idle to 9600 RPM. This long duration spark makes more power!
FIRST SOLUTION: the C.D. (Capacitive Discharge) Ignition. This Ignition does not CHARGE the Ignition Coil; rather it uses the 1:100 Winding ratio as a TRANSFORMER. First the 12 volts of your electrical system is converted to 200-500 volts and stored in a CAPACITOR, when the SPARK is needed the CAPACITOR is DISCHARGED into your Ignition Coil, Instantly producing a SPARK of 30,000 to 50,000 volts with a DURATION of only 0.1 to 0.3 milliseconds (0.0003 seconds)... this is NOT A LONG SPARK!
SUPERIOR SOLUTION: Multiple Coil Ignition Systems. By using an Ignition Coil for every pair of companion Cylinders, the TIME available to CHARGE an Ignition coil goes up by a factor of 4 on an 8cyl Engine. This allows you to use the advantages inherent in an INDUCTIVE SPARK... this uses only enough voltage to ARC the gap of the Spark Plug and dissipates the rest of the SPARK ENERGY in DURATION! Up to over 2 Milliseconds (that's over 90 degrees at 8000 RPM) .

Hope this helps, as you can see there is a diffrence.

 

Sorry I thought he had a carbed 308

 

Nick, we just installed the XDI you sold me and it worked well at Watkins Glen this weekend. XDI gets two thumbs up and i like that we can upgrade to the Tec3r when we do more engine development work

 

EXCELLENT! Your windage tray update is also on its way to you!

 

put the new taylor wires in last night and ran the car today. better, but still some hesitation and backfire. checked the spark with the tester and found all 8 leads fire regularly with a bright spark. and lastly i can now see 3 extenders with obvious burn through after running the car at high rpm"s for 1/2 hr. ricambi has them on the way and i think i'm done with the digiplex disaster. what have i learned? 1. the support and advice from other people who use this forum makes owning an old ferrari possible without going into severe debt - many thanks. 2. never yank on the plug wires when the car dies stupid! 3. a 308 is still a car and you can fix it, particularly if you get good help. thanks again, jon s.

 

Got it, thanks. The New England Fchatter will be getting together so we can all see and install it in early Oct as i am off to italy for a few weeks

Amen! Got shocked by stupidly messing around with the new XDI this past weekend with the car running. The shock was not THAT bad, as i have (literally) tasted high amperage and lemme tell you, THAT is something not to be repeated!

Laugh at voltage to some degree, but amperage is some serious sh&t!

 

Be careful. Be very, very careful. You probably didn't get a full charge from the system. There is enough there to knock you on your a$$ and do some serious damage. If you must play with the wires while the car is running (and there is really NO reason whatsoever to do that), at least wear a heavy insulating rubber glove. And work with one hand behind your back. You don't want to be holding a wire in one hand, be leaning on the car with the other, and have the system discharge through your heart. The safest way is not to touch the wires while the car is running at all. Fiddle with them with the ignition off, then start the car.

Better safe than sorry.

And glad to hear that the ignition is working well. I saw your setup at WGI and it looks impressive. Have to think about doing that to the '78.

Regards,
Steve

 

Amen, old electronics adage goes "Keep one hand in your pocket." Last thing i want to be is part of a closed circuit!

Just do it! Seriously dude, you track your car a lot and the throttle response is a touch better/smoother. She also seems to pull a bit harder from 4k on up, but need to dyno tune her this spring as we JUST finished installing the system on Wednesday before the WG event and had no real time to tune it so i was doing that at the track by sound and feel.

BTW, i KNOW your car shoots flames out the exhaust from WOT to off and brake (saw it last time while we were at WGI right as you turned after the front straight). My car shot flames before XDI. It appears the waste spark from the XDI has eliminated the WOT to off/hard brake exhaust burble due to custom free flow system so bet i no longer shoot flames out the exhaust is my guess PLUS the plugs should pretty much never foul.

As a heads up, just received Nick's oil pan tweak so will not get starvation during hard right handers. Looks very well thought out and us New England Fchat guys will be installing it in early October. Do you have wet or dry sump?

 

I was out of town till today. Thanks for the reply. I will use info and rewire tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Phil