Plug wires touching ?

There is nothing to worry about.

 

American autos and Ferrari have very different attitudes towards that. In a perfect world its OK. But the world is not perfect and Ferrari buys junk spark plug wire. They bundle them together and the chances of cross fire and shorting to ground go to the moon. Its as though the Italians have zero understanding of electricity.

Like the turbine engine in commercial airliners, coil on plug ignition systems with no secondary wire came along none too soon.

 

Mirek,

There are too many reasons to go with MSW cop. Contact John cribjj and get it done. You will be so happy and your engine bay will clean up too. Install is simple and the cop deletes future trouble shooting issues.

Answer to ? Is ferrari way works but there is cross talk. I remember video at night sparks visibly leaking out coming from wires. High school physics teaches emf and the right hand rule. It makes no sense what ferrari does buy we accept their sticky interiors too. There is a reason MSW developed the aftermarket parts they did. They are all the weak points in our cars. If not trying to win concourse modify and modernize as needed.

 

So true Brian & thanks Carl.

HT wires WILL fail over time but it's an insidious type of gradual failure where the engine may be missing or lacks power, and having them bundled together is definitely a "no-no", especially when they're hidden under a plastic cover. Sure, it looks cleaner that way but it also hides the wires from visual inspection. There's very good reasons that the HT wires on domestic cars are out in the open and separated by those little plastic clips.

Ferrari continued to use 7mm wires with dubious insulation quality even after most OEM's had switched to silicone insulation and the aftermarket had gone to 8mm & even 9mm silicone insulated wires and as Brian said "it's as though the Italians have zero understanding of electricity" which is evidenced by the way they constructed the relay/fuse motherboards and put the high current fan circuits directly on it, and stayed with that design through 3 generations of cars! The downright stupid things they did on the electrical side are way too numerous to detail here, but if something isn't "right" with your car, I'd say at least 50% of the time it's going to be electrical/electronic in nature.

 

You know, if stock ignition wires are so troublesome, 90% of F355 would not be running because those wires are bundled squished together at the entrance to the head and then each wire is squished next to other wires and in between the aluminum channel (ground). They run.

 

Mitch, surely you've seen arcing between the HT wires at night? I have and it was one of the motivators for me to come up with the COP ignition upgrade.

 

I have not. The misfires I have seen is from water seeping under the gaskets and filling up the plug cavities. That is not going to be solved by COP.

 

Actually the MSW plugging of the cavities is totally superior to OEM. I'm really surprised 355 guys have not built their own COP system especially when mixture control is critical on those motors. All you need is some aging not regularly serviced injectors and aging OEM spark plug wires and performance goes right out the window.

 

Help me out. The 2.7 Moronic will not easily support a COP system correct? Only the later versions do?

 

I am proving it does work, but at the moment its officially in process...

 

Good news. So what is the trigger? The secondary wire circuits on low voltage or something like that? Is the 2.7a wasted spark system? Might make things easier right?

 

I could have sworn this conversation was about 550's.

So a really bad idea is OK if it runs. Got it. About what I expect from a hobby home mechanic who has been in the business about a week and a half.

The 355 arrangement was so good it was done only one time and replaced by COP on the very next generation car. Same with the entire secondary system on the V12 we are speaking of.

 

All the Ferrari electronic ignition systems were waste spark until the 360/575M/612 generation of Motronic 7.1 came out, then they became fully sequential.

The Motronic 2.7 ignition in the 456GT differs from the 5.2 in the 550 in that the igniters for the 2.7 were external to the main ECU's and are mounted on the air boxes, while for the 5.2 they were inside the ECU's, which, IMO, was a blunder by Bosch, not an advancement. If Bosch had kept the igniters outside the ECU's they would have been better positioned for the next generator of COP which used "smart" coils that have the igniters "embedded" within the head of the coil (575M, etc.)

To do COP for the 2.7 we simply pick up the trigger signals at the igniters although the COP harness actually plugs into the same spot as the 550 setup which is at the coilpack. So it's the very same wiring & same harnesses as used for the 550's.

AeroSurfer's 456GT is our first 2.7 setup and as he stated above, it's still in progress, but we know it works on one of his banks. We're just adjusting harness lengths now for a better fitment.

 

Way cool! So the cop triggers off high voltage or you take that down to low voltage somewhere upstream?

 

Nope, it's a low voltage (basically earth) signal that we get from the igniters. Think of the igniter as being a relatively high current solid state relay. The coil(s) have +12 on them all the time, and the igniter supplies the ground signal to charge the coil(s), then at the end of the proper dwell time, the igniter opens the circuit and the coil discharges through the spark plug.

 

I get that but I do not get how that ties into the stock spark plug lead panel which I believe is high voltage. I guess I am not understanding exactly where the trigger is coming from. Probably not from the spark plug lead panel.

 

I'm not sure what you're referring to as the "stock spark plug lead panel"? Do you mean the plastic cover that encloses the OEM HT leads that connect to the plugs?

If so, we're getting rid of that and the OEM HT leads altogether, along with the OEM coilpacks.

The coils in a COP system fit directly onto the spark plugs, so there's no more wasted energy in the HT leads.

 

With the stock system, ECU sends a signal via a 4 pin connector to the stock coil pack which then sends high voltage to the plugs via the HT leads. With the COP system, the coil pack is unplugged from the 4 pin connector, the coil pack and the HT leads are removed from the car. The COP's are installed then a harness is plugged into the 4 pin connector and then to the appropriate COP's. The COP's get their signal directly from the ECU. Remember this is a wasted spark system so only 3 triggers plus ground are needed. Hope this makes sense.

 

That makes sense thanks for clearing that up for me.
I am guessing it is only three signal wires per side due to the wasted spark setup as three sets of two cylinders are in crank phase IIRC.

 

Yup