Wierd COP Problem - its eating me inside
 

I have to be the only one with this issue.

I still havent worked out my cranking settings, forget them for now. Its a bitch to start the car, takes like 5 tries.

I got a different issue. Once I do get the car started, no matter where the A/F ratio is, the car refuses to idle smoothly. It hunts for idle, up and down, up and down, runs rough, shakes, and it smells of fuel. During this phase I will periodically it gas to see if it changes anything, and nothing. BUT... At 160F, if I tap the gas every issue goes away and it idles dead fucking smooth. I go for a drive, its a DREAM. Turn the car off and it restarts beautifully.

BUT... For the past 3 nights from a cold start it would always start with the same story. I tried changing warmup enrichments on the fly, from 9:1 all the way to 15:1 and it still continues. I cant even pinpoint exactly the percentage I need for WUE because it fluctuates so much, I just change it from 100% - 150% in increments of 10 and look for change.

I did notice one thing, don't know if it helps. Once the car does start, if I look at the VE Table I see the green highlight sitting at 50KPA. I never really payed attention,but is that normal? I never really payed attention.

I dont know what it is, I have logs of the car running if you guys are interested.

are they all sparking? are they firing in the correct order?

So I am sitting thinking, maybe its a vacuum leak? But if it was, then wouldnt it have a shitty idle all the time. Also, since im running a MAP, theoretically a vacuum leak shouldn't affect me anyway.

100% positive. The car runs flawlessly once warm. I even tested to make sure they all fire, once before installing them and then by pulling the plugs while the car was running. They have to be firing in the correct order because I plugged my factory coils in the same way with the same pairs and it ran. But if the pairs were wrong then it wouldnt run at all.

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I got a great log of the warmup, and then *poof* all symptoms gone.

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At first I thought it was my spark plugs because I installed BKR6E, instead of the factory 5E when I fouled up my last ones. But... It runs perfectly with the factory coil pack, so that cant be the culprit.

is it a specific time? like exactly30 seconds or something? then that would be the ASE enrichments.

The entire time until 160F is breached.

post msq and log.

At least yours spark on the gdamn car. :(

Where can I host the Log? Its 700kb.

Thanks

Most recent Log.

http://www.mediafire.com/?djttejdvi0j

I have a two more from previous days.

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Heres a stupid question. Does the TPS Tuning do anything to the MS or is it that strictly for me to see what the raw values are?

Hmm, I looked at the log and nothing stands out to me. Post your MSQ. FWIW between 150-160 *F the problem goes away.

Thanks, ill post the MSQ tonight. I would have done it last night but my laptop was in the car.

the worst thing about all this is just how the problem comes and goes. aside from the engine warming up, what happens around 160F? warmup shuts off is one, but i have isolated that as not the culprit.

3 logs with the same problem and it dissipates after 160. i am starting to think it may be the coils, but i have doubt because they either work or they dont, and if the cant work at warmup they most certainly wouldnt be able to work at 7000 RPM and they do. That and my old coils working flawlessley during warmup with the same msq.

Maybe i missed a setting. Aside from swapping in COPs, does anything have to be changed in the MSQ other then dwell?

I am just putting out whats has been going through my mind lately, hoping you guys could build on that.

Had a thought.

How about timing? Right now my idle cells are 17 degrees. Maybe the coils have a hard time idling the car at that angle when cold? I dont see how but its a thought. But I dont know what affect angle would have on this problem seeing as how it idle at the same angle when hot just not when cold.

Theoretically, if the engine is cold the mixture needs more time to burn so angle could potentially cause a rough idle when cold.

Here is the MSQ

http://www.mediafire.com/?zzzepy0ssl9

Anyone have a link to the original discussion about COP's, how you guys determined you need them and such and such?

No thoughts? :(

https://www.miataturbo.net/forum/sho...ght=cop+thread
haha there is my contribution

Didnt know that was the first thread.

Heres a question.

Have you guys(with cops) ever had to change your spark setting or re do your timing after installing cops?

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So heres a thought I had this morning.

They say a lean fuel mixture requires more electrical voltage to ignite. My car has trouble idling, could that be attributed to a weak spark?

I mean I tried increasing the AF/R with no effect, but that could be due to the cold engine and it having a difficulty igniting it further.

Its gotta be the coils hands down. They are just not firing as hard as they should. The car only runs with super lean mixtures and at that for 10 seconds at a time, and backfires with rich mixtures.

To get my car to run for 10 seconds, I had to turn off my afterstart encrichment completely and reduce my Warmup to practically nothing.

i didnt change nothing when i went to cops, just lowered the dwell and enjoyed....

My vote is for weak 12v and gnd as well. Pretty sure these exact COPs have been known to shoot a bolt of electricity a few inches to the nearest grounded piece of metal when testing.

Anyway, problem solved. I used fatter wires for grounds first and shared them between all four coils, same problem but slightly better results. Car started but still had trouble idling. So what did I do next. I separated the coils into pairs for grounds. I paired them by how they fire. So 1 and 4 was on its own ground and so were 2 and 3. Grounded them both to the valve cover and problems went away. Started easily using my old MSQ file with all my old cranking parameters. Took it for a test drive and it went like a bat out of hell.

Thanks for sticking with me guys.

Ground connections seem to be a very special point for the COPs.
Glad you got it running.

Greets

Figured out the problem 100% for sure this time.

If I want the car to idle smooth all the way from cold start I gotta use a 5ms dwell. Anything less and it doesnt work.

Anyone wanna explain what dwell is? or how it makes a difference in my case? or even why I have to run a dwell twice what is recommended? Does it affect strength of the spark, or engine performance?

its how long the coils charge before the spark is released....maybe the one's you got were weaksauce...people have been putting lots-o-miles on the toyota cops on stock dwell times without issue...so if it works it works.

^ I guess I am just that lucky.

What if I just leave it at 5.0? The car has been running really good, and I cant sense anything wrong. My biggest concern is if this dwell thing is going to affect spark strength which is, like, the reason why I did this preventative modification.

What about this?
http://autorepair.about.com/library/a/1h/bl483h.htm

Maybe I should check my timing again.

You shouldn't need to adjust dwell from the factory setting right? Since COPSs are reported to work with the stock ECU.

^ Yes that is correct.

Well now I seem to have catched your COP problem - installed the emu with boomslang harness and cops are not firing... Could it be, that the relatively small but about 1,20meter long wires of the boomslang eat up enough of the trigger voltage to hide the COPs from firing?

Edit - I had tried the COP conversion last year with the emb and boomslang and ended giving up because of the same problem.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Greets

Def not the wires for the trigger. With the key on, are you getting 12 volts at the coils?

Can you calibrate dwell with the EMU?

O.K. it got nothing to do with the COPs - I tried with EMU and original ignition system -didn't run. Tried without the EMU - runs. So it's in the wiring of my changed emb boomslang.

I will check the wiring and then will bridge the cut wires to make sure the harness is fine. Then we wil go further.

Greets

Just a little update - had a check of the rebuild boomslang today - everything was fine.
Tried just with base settings of the EMU -nothing.

Then I bridged all the cut wires at the EMU end of the boomslang - car started.

Plugged into the EMU again - runs. Suppose it was a loose connector pin at the new C connector on my EMU boomslang.
Car also runs with the COPs and EMU but starts really bad - takes a long time to crank and if I end cranking - the car starts. Runs fine with rock steady idle. Any suggestions? (maybe I should start a thread because I'm afraid the question will drown here)

Greets

I think you should, and explain the situation clearer.

Well - I did and hopefully made the situation clearer - but sometimes that isn't quite easy if you have to do in a foreign language. (Although I tend to think in english in the last time if it comes to turbo and emanage things...;) ) But there are times where I don't find the right words to describe a certain situation.

The thread is in the "Emanaged" section - hopefully someone can give me a hint.

Greets