Nickforza ignition system, is it good ?

I take it I got it right.

 

the 2valve injected cars have badly retarded stock ignition curves. the electromotive unit gave a noticeable improvement in mid range gruntin my 81 gtsi even though the number of breakpoints is small and not adjustable for throttle inputs or vacuum. for the expense it's well worth doing, especially since you won't have to maintain archaic marelli equipment. jon s

 

HAHA! who cares what the prima donna, re-sale crowd thinks. these cars were designed to compete, keep racing!!!!
those dudes live in a room full of mirrors.

without a doubt, the best & most recognizable representative of the marque -but from a power standpoint, built at the worst time!!!
but they have all the potential in the world, so even a Ferrari can be a sleeper!
all they need are owners who have the balls in the first place.

my gts aint like the others. i waited YEARS to find a fast one whose price reflected its value, or a stock one that would be worth modifying, track car that can be street driven -you getthe idea.


i am contemplating the alcohol in my 328 as well. i have it in my turbo buick and it works great. i am able to pull 25-27lbs of boost on 93 oct.

id love to see a gt with NO2!! when i had my mustang, i used to drag it, but i sold it before i got to move onto nitrous(which was the plan). anyway, there were peeps that had incredible nitro setups on their 'stangs. dual stage systems that were throttle activated and computer controlled(to reduce shock on the drivetrain). some mustang specific kits also only had a nitro solenoid, there would be a line running straight to the fuel pressure regulator so the fuel injectors were able to supply the added fuel without the extra routing , jetting, tuning or maintenance of a fuel solenoid -genius!
these kits are adaptable to any FI'd car.

things like turbocharging and nitrous were 'black arts' before EFI. but fuel injection has come such a long way that these power adders can be tuned & used safely in everyday situations. so much better and easier than carbs or the very limited k-jet system.
i cant say enough about EFI!!!!!

i think the 2nd expansion tank is really slick,
btw can the EFI allow you run unleaded with the 12:1 compression?

 

I looked seriously into nitrous for my 328, even consulting some old friends in the competition engine building business who are N20 experts. I have a lot of experience with engine building but none with N20.

Adding around 80HP would be very safe and easy and there are several kits from different companies that would work perfectly. These kits can deliver up to 150HP but anything more than a 1/3 increase in power over stock suggests that additional work be done to related components to ensure longevity. I was quite enthused but basically, I gave up the notion because I could not find a suitable location for the bottle to work properly unless I went with a smaller bottle than the standard 10 lb version.

The orientation of the bottle is critical and the only place it seems that a 10 lb bottle would work properly would be on the passenger seat floor!

 

i am guess-timating that a stock 328 puts out in the area of 200rwhp.
after i cleaned up my wiring harnesses and lines, i went from 355rwhp to 367rwhp.
so i am around 170hp over stock. my car is low miles, but the conversion was done in 1991. the motor was rebuilt with nikasil liners when the turbo was added but no other drivetrain mods that i know of, and no problems. i actually think there is more power yet to be unleashed!!

i remember nitrous kits that had these real tiny bottles. if i remember correctly they were called the sneaky pete system. but they were only good for 1 or 2 passes at a time!!!

 

I'm hoping I can get it to fit in here if with a bit of mod to the trunk floor on that side, and then hide it behind a some trim plate like what I put on the other side to hide the EFI harness and MSD box.

Couple pics of my nitrous injector plate setup too.
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Hee hee ... too early in the day for purist bashing ... or not enough coffee yet ... some guys don't think anything's wrong with having a Ferrari that's slower than a minivan ... oops .. I slipped .

My experience with fuel is I can run premium if I back the curve down about 4 deg .. which is 32 deg full advance. I've been adding 5 gal of avgas to every tank now for a few years and I run 36 deg full advance with that mix. There's a lot of people that don't reccomend avgas. In one of Carroll Smith's books he referenced using it if a guy didn't want to run race gas ... $8-$10/gal vs. $4.50 gal and I go thru what averages out to about a tank a week ... I'm cheap . edit: I also add 6 oz of Marvel Mystery oil which I was told helps prevent the avgas deterioating hose. Just sharing that in case someone just wants to blindly follow my lead ... the stuff (avgas) smells so sweet but it has lead so no CATS.

cheers

 

I had started another thread on starting problems with my 308. We thought it was a carb problem, but now it seems pretty clear that it is a problem with the ignition. Here is a post that I made to the other thread, but since there is discussion about the Electromotive system here, I thought I'd cross-post it so those following this thread would be aware of a potential problem that can be avoided according to the folks at Electromotive.

So, here it is:

Well, the plot thickens -- It looks like it is not the carbs after all. It appears to be the XDi box or the crank sensor pickup that is defective. A year ago, the timing ring worked loose and one of the set screws hit the pickup and slightly damaged it. The primary suspicion is that some moisture may have gotten into the pickup and is interfering with the signal. It worked fine after the damage, but now, although the XDi unit is "seeing" the presence of the sensor, no signal is being detected. Thus, we suspect the sensor may be bad.

But I also had an interesting conversation with Electromotive. I called to discuss the situation, and two different people there, including the owner, Fred, suggested that is could be electrical interference due to bad grounding. He suggested running a separate ground wire (substantial!) from the negative post of the battery directly back to the engine, and disconnecting the chassis grounding strap from the engine to chassis. He also suggested running the postive power lead that powers the main fuse block directly from the positve post of the battery, rather than from the post on the starter motor. This, he suggested, would eliminate stray electrical noise that could be interfering with the XDi box reading the sensor signal, which is a DC sine wave.

Anyway, they are sending me a new sensor unit, which I will install and see if that eliminates the problem. If so, then probably a bad sensor. But I'm going to consider doing something with the grounding anyway, as my experience has always been that 90% of all electrical problems can be traced to a bad ground.

Will report back!!

 

That location for the nitrous bottle is what I was trying to do on my 328 but it just won't fit.

 

there was a metal spacer/heat shield in there I took out to get it in that far ... but I still would have to cut the fibreglass body to drop the bottle in further ... not sure how the 328 is back there but there's some space between the fibreglass "floor" and the louvered cover that's behind the wheel ... so close yet so far.

 

Everytime I've had a miss with my car somehow it got blamed on the EFI/MSD boxes and all companies said I needed to upgrade this or that ... turned out my problem was shorting from one of my coil on plug units that had some oil inside it ... it was the craziest thing that the miss would only happen at 6k in 4th gear going up a steep hill ... and it would miss like a rev limiter ... would not pull past 6k going up this big hill I test on. On the flat she'd cough once right at 6k and keep pulling ... seemd so much like software/running out of fuel and like I said manufactuers told me what I was running shouldn't be working anyway ... sigh.

 

Don't want to hijack and go off on the nitrous thing but with EFI what I thought would be cool is to inject nitrous only at lower rpm's (3k-6k) while I've got a bunch of injector band width available with the one set of standard injectors ... can always go to bigger injectors of course if I wanted to push into the higher rpm bands.

cheers

 

I love EFI. It has SO many possibilities....

I would never go back to a carb on my Corvette.

maybe one day, if I ever feel rich again after rebuilding/upgrading my 308 (I am thinking about that 3.5 liter thing), I may invest in some throttle bodies and do EFI on my 308 or 358 or whatever it turns out to be.

Tuning while driving around on the street is too easy, datalog, adjust and try again. As a matter of fact, I could have my car detail tuned on a dyno, A/F ratios, spark, everything, in about the same time than it takes me to get the damn airbox off to get to the jets on the Webers.

Doug

 

Coil issues can be "interesting." Once had a car that cut out only on left hand turns..coil!

 

"Invest" in throttle bodies? If you're cheap like me use the Suzuki Hayubusa TB's and all you got to do is make an intake. I documented it all in a thread on here somewhere ... all you need is a few pieces of alumium, some welding rod, and a die grinder . True it's not running yet but shouldn't be long and (famous last words) don't see any major issues .

cheers

 

we've definitely went on a tangent here away from oliv928's original post.
maybe a new thread on EFI conversions, or hp recipes for the 8 series are in order.

dont know how much the Forza ignition cost, but if its reasonable, there is only one way to see if it works or not!!
keep us posted

from what i know, AVgas is refined so that an aircrafts fuel tanks would be lighter than if filled with regular gas. it reduces detonation like hi octane fuel, but is not a true power builder like high octane fuel.

for the alky system in my grand national, i mix 1 gallon of denatured alcohol with 1 ounce of Uplon to prevent deterioration. i dont know what Uplon is, but it looks like thicker tranny fluid. dont really know what marvels mystery oil is exactly either!

 

Somehow I missed this thread. I'll chime in on the ignition system......GO FOR IT!
It is a piece of cake to install and Nick is great about the support. His instructions are good and if you follow them you'll be just fine. The hardest part is deciding where to mount everything. Have that planned out ahead of time including any brackets you may need to make up. I mounted the coils on a bent piece of Aluminum mounted to the frame
I did my install myself last year and the car runs flawlessly. Starts every time and never misses a beat. I could not say that with the old distributors.
The improvement in power through the rpm band was noticeable as well as idle, etc...
I have a thread with pics on my install here:

http://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/showthread.php?t=204877&highlight=electromotive+install

Good luck!

 

Hi Guys the price is $ 1650.00 for everything to do the install including ignition wires. That includes 24/7 tech support during install.

You get XDI unit with timing pre set for your year of car
Wiring harness
2 DFU coil packs
1 tach black box to change the voltage so the tach reads correctly
Custom trigger wheel
Sensor bracket
Sensor
Relays with pig tails
fuses
ignition wires
Photos & instructions


Here is a link

http://www.nicksforzaferrari.com/forzaferrariwebsite1_025.htm

 

We did a K&N swap at the dyno, and got +3hp

 

I put an XDI-2 system that I got from Nick into my QV as a precursor to the supercharger install. It's been a big help to be able to hook it up to my laptop and tune the advance, as well as to ensure smooth quick accelleration as far as spark. I also got the blocks from Wade (308nut) that fit where the old distributors were, as mounts for the new coil packs. They're wonderful!

 

to paraphrase myself from the glowing header thread:

sofar 15K miles without the slightest bit of ignition trouble,
running flawlessly and pulling stronger every day...

changing to Nick`s XDI direct coil ignition, was certainly - together with birdman`s fusebox - the single best modification I did to my car



best from Munich, Germany
Michael

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with regards to the simple electromotive unit, even though it doesn't give you a complex igniton map, the ability to advance the ignition on my 81 which was badly retarded for emission in stock form made a noticeable improvement in mid range power. do it. jon s

 

Nick, thanks for timely info.

I can take it over to Norwood to talk about the future of my 308.

 

Now that we are talking Ignition systems, anybody want to comment on the TEC GT and TEC3??

Nick, I'm assuming the TEC GT and TEC3 packages come with all the same hardware as the above mentioned system?