I've been watching this thread with interest ever since the subject first came up. The main problem it seems is that this 'condition' ONLY occurs on some vehicles and then only at certain times. All of the testing of the new wire will do NO good if you can't prove you have the problem on the test car. Did you scope your test car before you swapped the wire out? The image above looks about as perfect as you are going to get. It would be nice to have a printout of the stock wire ON THE SAME CAR at the same RPM to see if anything has changed. Also, before trying to fix the problem with new wiring it would be nice to find what is causing the interference. From an electronic stand point it would be easy to point a finger at 1 of 2 things - the alternator or the distributor.

The alternator would be a good place to start because of its generation of AC voltages and the associated EMI. The distributor would be a terrible place to look, since we don't have them. The coil on plug design should create very little noise around it (although if the crank wire runs right by the plug it could be an issue). What else under the hood could produce noise? Also, from what I've read they claim this is only an issue under high boost? Not much (if anything really) electronically changes around vacuum/boost. The only thing I can really think of is your spark plugs (and coils) will fire at a higher frequency. However, this is completely independant of boost.

It seems to me that if this is a true problem then you should be able to find NON FI cars with this issue. Like I said, I think its worthless to test this 'fix' on a car that you couldn't replicate the problem on.

It would be nice to know how much filtering Nissan put on the input of the ECU. Nissan engineers are very thorough with thier electronics (generally). It is also VERY possible to do software filtering that can reject any noise picked up by a non shielded wire.

Lastly, what are the specs on the wire you are using? $4 a foot seems to be VERY high for any wire that I would pick for this application. I would imagine all you need is a 3 or 4 wire shielded cable (I don't think twisted pair would help in this application but I would have to check the service manual to see what kind of signal we are dealing with). I have access to different types of 3/4 wire shielded Belden cable that I might be able to donate to this project, especially if it can bring the price down considerably.

Thanks,

Kevin
www.KPtechnologies.net

 

Kevin,thanks for your input. That is the challenge with this project. Both APS and Charles cant accurately and consistently replicate this issue. There are just too many variables. I still point to the fact that APS noticed this issue on some of the test vehicles under certain specific conditions. When they swapped to the shield cable, the problem was solved. Hence, they decided at the last minute to include the shielded cable in their system.

This crank angle sensor cable is only $75, I think anymore R&D would be cost prohibitive for Phunk. You would litereally need to bring in several high boost cars to his shop, put them on the scope...datalog...swtich cables..etc..etc.

Admittedly, and Phunk mentions this in his post, we cant prove the problem or solution 100%, so this product is being sold as a precautious against potential crank signal interence.

But with over 40 of us building very high horespower forged motors, its a cheap precaution against signal interference.

 

KPierson: Your looking at it all wrong. The posted picture from the scope WAS before the cable install. If you had read my posts I have been saying all along that I have not been able to prove that there is even is a problem and I am only doing these cables because it was requested of me.

As I stated also, I am figuring on getting a price break on the cable per foot since I am going to need roughly 400' of it. Thanks for your offer but I want to use the cable that I have found for reasons I have stated in previous posts.

If you feel $75 is too much... feel free to cut the plug off your harness and run your own shielded cable... you wont hurt my feelings one bit If you want me to continue testing cars looking for this anomoly, then the price isnt going to get any cheaper. I have better things to do with my days at work than run cars on the dyno all day watching their crank trigger output.

The reason I did one test car for a day was just to see if it was an extremely obvious problem.

 

keep the payments coming...we have about 10 sets of wires paid so far.

 

My payment should be in tomorrow when my bank updates their crap...

 

thanks Miaplaya...believe me..I know PayPal can be a pain at times.

 

My payment will be to you probably on Thursday for both wires.

 

If we don't need this when running an F Con, you can delete me from the list...sorry!

Phunk - what's the reason the F Con does not need this? Is it somehow accomplishing the same thing internally because of its drivers?

 

How many people are in now? I definately want one.
Alan

 

Not sure how I missed this thread until now...

phunk... did you ever get a readout from the higher boost car (you mentioned this after the initial test you did showed nothing out of the ordinary).

Just for the record, I've actually been working with a local shop on something very similar to this because we have seen the same issue on FI-ed Maximas in the past. All total, I think we're out about $40 or so for our test piece.

$40 or $75... I think either way it is small potatoes when you consider how much most have invested in their boosted motors. If this is a major point of failure leading to blown motors, I'd much rather spend a little for insurance than try saving the $40 or $75 now and wind up being the 1 in 20 to have a failure.

If a solution wasn't already in the works for me, I'd be all over this GB.

 

AlanL, I have no doubt we'll get enough paid people. We have roughly 20wires paid at this point.

If interested, goto the thread in the Private GB Section.

 

BUMP:

Friendly reminder to get your payment in ASAP. The deadline is this Monday.

https://my350z.com/forum/showthread....0&pagenumber=1

 

Listen,

Given the Nissan TSB, would you gents consider pushing out the deadline for this???

I mean, I would like to have a chance to check with dealer and see If I can get the same fix for free versus paying over $200.

Also, did APS publish anything?

 

luanda, Mia and others have confirm that TSB is the OLD TSB from almost a year ago. It is not related to the crank angle wire. It is a TSB for the replacement of the sensor. By all means, if you havent gotten the new sensor, and you have an effected car, then get it taken car of. But the TSB doesnt change out the wire.

 

The crank trigger wire is only what you need; the cam wires are a novelty, IMO....

What happened to APS?

I'm still a little unsettled that they promote like crazy on here, aren’t really a direct forum sponsor and they haven’t been too quick to point out things that could save some engines... I know many think they're protecting their IP, but they act like they care so much for the forum community - but it seems to me they're only out to sell product and not really offer general help to the forum if it doesn’t benefit them directly...

I hope this doesn't come across as a flame on APS, I would have purchased their kit if they had one for the G35... I would still purchase products from them if they started offering some solutions for the G … I guess I’m just frustrated when someone knows of a problem that will cause your motor to blow and keeps it quite for their own personal gain.

Phunk has really set the bar high for what I’ve come to expect from a vendor on a forum… Heck, he’s been so helpful that I’ll go out of my way to purchase product from him in the future…

Off of the soap box...

 

I thought APS got banned from the site? Or Peter got banned?

 

he is here, but apparently walking on thin ice with the site administrators. He posts more often on the other site.

 

Yeah, I think it is pretty crappy how he pops up everywhere but with the obvious purpose to promote APS but can't spend the few bucks to sponsor the boards.

 

I've tried visiting the other 3-4 sites trying to get info, but this Forum is the place to be... Those other site just don't have the content or mainly all of you guys that are great about posting good info...

 

Z1 Performance: I cannot promise that the FCON does not need it... we all know my car never had a problem... but I really do not know if its because of the FCON. But it is highly likely. It is possible that the FCON has some sort of higher intelligence in its interpretation of these signals... perhaps it keeps a reference sync between the crank and cam triggers so that it can help filter out unwanted noise.

Hard to say really, but I will be putting the wire on my car anyway, thats for sure.


mcduck: I never did ship them the sample. There are a couple reasons in detail.. however since it looks like the GB is still on I will go ahead with some more research and I will be getting one down to them. It wasnt for a car anyone was running a scope... but a car that was having some odd anomalies that could potentially be the result of CAS issues.

luanda: As far as I know, they never did publish anything on it. However the need for anything published it little to none. I am actually just more curious to hear how common they found it, or under what circumstances they found it most prevalent. The fix is an easy one, as a high quality shielded cable replacing the stock one, and the pins in which its wired to at the ECU are changed... there should be no room for further problems.

Does anyone else have any further questions they need help with?

-Charles