I have a customers car here to diagnose a problem, he had posted about it on here before but the car was not around for me to check it out... I just glanced at it and immediatly found that the #1 coil is toast... externally visable you can see it has melt down.

This was using the diodes and the latest E-Manage update at the time of tuning, which was maybe 2 months ago? Either way, he got about 3 weeks out of it before this... I havent taken it apart yet to see how many coils are done.

 

Maybe we should stick with version 1.33. That was the one I used for a 1.5years without any blow coils issues.....and no others reported by people using the orginal firmware.

 

Well, I have another update - I just blew two more coils...dealership is basically saying I am on the hook for these ones. On the phone, they said it looks like they are blowing out the side of the coil, so it appears to be electrical in nature, and not heat related.

Gotta find a way to get a beefier coil in there....

This is really pissing me off....

 

Holy cow...what is going on there? How is everything wired up? What kind of diodes? What firmware again?

 

No Diodes....all wiring has been checked...and my tuner is not returning my calls. I am getting rather dissappointed with the guys at Ultimate Racing in TO....not good at returning calls when there are problems....

...just spewing, venting, ranting, raving......

 

My bet is your short that fried your ECU and coil packs the first time damaged the factory harness somewhere and now it is going to be a PITA to track down where the problem is.

Good luck man.

 

Thanks mate. I am no mechanic, but how do short out the harness? I mean electronic modules I understand, but does the voltage to the coils really get high enough to melt wire in the harness?? I emans that's the only way to short out the wire right??

 

The problem isnt in the harness wiring per se. The lack of diodes is keeping the voltage a little bit too high coming out of the eManage.

Luanda, you need your tuner to install some diodes on the output wires, ...before risking another set of coils, IMHO.

 

I'm calling your "wire threads poking through the shrinkwrap" a short, since it was probably a hot wire that touched ground.

When you "short" a wire like that, you can cause large amounts of heat which can melt insulation anywhere along that wire or who knows what kind of damage. Now, whenever you're driving down the road, that bare/naked spot of wiring or damaged section could be touching something else that is causing that.

Just a guess though man...but in my limited experience something serious enough to short out an ECU *COULD* have caused some damage elsewhere, which is leading to more burnt coils. Maybe even the eManage got damaged, I don't know.

 

eek what a nightmare.

I have a customers car that was doing fine for about a year. then a few months ago we put in the fuel system, and all was good.

then we put in the ignition harness WITH diodes and everything WAS good for maybe 3 weeks.

his car started its fun by misfiring a cylinder or two when the engine was cold started in the morn, then ran fine after warmup. Then it got to the point where the car ALWAYS ran like ****, missing a cylinder or two.

Now the car is back here, and its easy to see at least the one fried ignition coil melted out the side. The question is how to make it so this doesnt happen again. We might end up taking the timing harness out for now.

 

Charles,

What about trying different diodes that John was suggesting earlier (below) ...would/could that make a material difference in you mind??

I tried quoting thse numbers to the guy at Radio Shack, and that didn't work....have to figure the SKU #....arghhh.....

 

wait so now there's two cars out there using the emanage with the ignition harness and they're both blowing up coils?

sounds suspicious about the emanage....

 

i just dont know about the diodes thing... i have a couple customer cars running around without the diodes and after they picked up their car I never heard a single complaint.

this particular car I spoke of in the last post, he had the diodes, but when the cold missfiring started he pulled the diodes out to see if maybe they themselves were causing a problem, but by then the damage was done and it made no difference.

 

I think a good solution is to not use the emanage to pull timing and use the J&S.

 

Ice, the original issue was when the wires were coming through the wrap (horrible sentence structure..so sorry). But IIRC, and I havent reread this entire post, so forgive me if I missed it....but after that wiring issue was sorted out, he burned another set of coils (or a couple of them) and was not running diodes.

Even in Phunk's case, the diodes were taken out...then the melted coils.

I can tell you that myself, and about 30-50 other customers, and a bunch of SGP's customers have all run the diodes, and never had a melted coil pack.

I have some extra coils on order, so when the Emanage Ultimate is tested on our car, I might get adventerous and test it without coils. I can put a multi-meter on the output wires, and check for higher than normal voltage as well......shouldnt be too hard to determine if the new EU runs lower voltage than the blue E.

 

The J&S is a good solution, but does profile the total and precise control over timing, that many of us need. It's method of reducing timing is either RPM based (x degree of timing retard for every 1000rpm), or boost dependent (1 degree of timing retard for every psi of boost). But if you want to precisely dial in timing, in a long linear fashion, then the eManage is your solution.

I hope John can get the J&S working WITH the timing harness, so the J&S can be the safegaurd..not the main timing adjuster.

 

Sharif,
Do you have access to an O-Scope? It will tell you how much the voltage is for the trigger as well as any static voltage. John from J&S and I will further our testing to the emanage ultimate once it arrives. I am curious if there is a difference in trigger voltage and static voltage.

 

Cheers Amy -

 

Luanda, I was fortunate enough for the first 12 months not to have any problems with my coils then I had burnt 5 coils in 1 tank of gas. I was getting random multiple misfire then losing a coil a little while later. I think because of the heat of summer was making the wrap soft on the wires and was allowing the sharp edges to poke through or to get interference with other wires wraped up and bound tight next to each other. The only thing I have done to correct this problem is that I pulled the engine harness through the firewall and rewraped all of the ignition harness wires and I had seperated them from each other a little bit and I took one peice of electrical tape for each wire and ran it length wise and folded it around the wire to give a little extra protection from each other and everthing is fine now. Knock on wood!!! I would get a random multiple misfire when ever I would hammer it and now I do not have that problem either, You might want to buy the diodes and install them and rewrap those wires. I am no mechanic and I installed my TT and did the diodes myself. You can do it yourself and sava some money. I hope this might help. Rich

 

shariff, my customers car fried the coils before taking out the diodes. he removed the diodes incase they were causing the problem.