Car's dead
 

Yesterday while road tuning my car it started running rough and did not want to move. We pulled the car over and parked it to find out the 2nd cylinder was not sparking and the 3rd cylinder was sparking continuously, with the engine not running and the ignition on. 1st and 4th cylinders were sparking correctly. Figuring it was the coil I replaced it but the car has yet to run. With the old coil pack it would at least start but idle rough with only two cylinders running. With the new coil it refuses to start and has the random pop out the exhaust every second or so.
I also get no tach signal in the gauge pod but I do get it in MS.

Any ideas will be appreciated. If I don't get this running by the end of the week I'm selling the damn thing and starting over. I'm tired of fixing problem after problem on it.

Did you corrupt the firmware during an msq burn?

+1
That's the only thing I can think of.

It can't be a bad CAS, right?

The corrupt firmware isn't such a bad idea. It did start right after burning a few cells in the VE table. When this happened I found out it inverted the spark output which I believe fried the coil.
Can't I remove a fuse to re-flash the firmware or do I have to disconnect the injectors and coils?

DEFINITELY disconnect the COILS and IGNITER.

I don't see how it could be the CAS without having prior problems with it. I didn't thing they would just die suddenly.

Dont worry about the injectors, just the ignitor and coil.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, butI wanted to see if anyone wanted to correct me.

If it was the CAS the tach wouldn't be showing rpms in megatune.

Ok, I'm sitting here in the car but I can't get it to run the flash. Is there anyway to force it into boot mode without having to rip out my carpet.
Normally I just run minicom, wipe and upload the new firmware in the terminal, because I'm on Linux.

Sometimes it won't do shit without bridging the boot jumper. I've had it happen to me a few times on the side of the highway. Luckily I had a phillips screwdriver and paper clip in the car. Oh, and 94 puts it right behind the seat.

Well its cold as shit right now and my laptop is the only thing keeping me warm.
I guess I'll try it in the morning when I have some light.

And Zabac, are there any more turbo Miatas around Charlotte? If so I think we all should meet up.

Dan, are you turbo yet?

FYI- on the 1.6 cars it is necessary only to unplug the igniter. This, by definition, disconnects the coil primaries. On the 1.8 cars, the coils themselves must be unplugged; only the low-voltage side.

This business about plug #2 not sparking while #3 is sparking continuously is very fishy. Electrically, these two are in series with one another under normal operation. In order for one to fire and the other not, there's gotta be a physical problem on the high-voltage side, most likely a short to ground somewhere in the vicinity of the non-sparking plug.

It also means that if you remove one plug of a pair (1/4 or 2/3), then neither will fire unless you've grounded the threaded portion of both.

Thanks for the information on what has to be unplugged. All of this started after burning settings to MS. Will inverting the spark outputs for awhile fry a coil, or should I look for something else causing this?

I had a similar thing happen to me in the beginning days of squirting my car. I agree with joe that it sounds like something is grounding out. Have you cleaned the flux off your board? That is what caused 99% of my issues similar to this.

All joints heated to 650*and the board was cleaned throughly before closing it up. I will check it all again when I reflash it tomorrow. Speaking of things grounding. I thought I saw a puff of smoke come out from the steering column when working on it earlier today. I didn't think anything of it, just passed it off as exhaust seeing as I didn't smell any electrical burn. I haven't done any wiring under the steering column except fuel pump and wiring for my WB. I guess it is all up for debate atm.

DXO-I know a few people around here. Hard to round everyone up with all kinds of busy schedules, but we should certainly try one weekend and do a dyno day, I have gained some hook-ups in the GSO area.

Paul-No, not quiet. I ran into bigger issues. :( Sad Panda!

Me and some friends were planning to go to the dyno in Concord, BRE Motorsports, here in the next few months when we get our cars running. My friend in south Greensboro has his car(240sx) here and I'm getting MS setup in it in my free time.

Sure, keep me posted.
What we have lined up in GSO is about 4-5 pulls each at $30-40 each.

BRE has decent prices at $50 an hour.

Back on topic. I'm going to pull the ECU here in about an hour and see if there is anything wrong.

After reflashing the MS it seems to want to start now but still wont. I checked all the solder joints and found no problems.

I still get no RPM in the gauge pod but I get it on MS. Where does the tech get its signal from?

Here is a pic of the spark plugs. These are NEW plugs.

2&3 are coated in carbon

1 has fuel on it
4 has fuel and carbon

On the 1.6, there is a yellow/blue wire coming from the igniter which feeds the tachometer on the dash as well as going to the diagnostic connector.

So RPM indication in MegaTune, but no dash tach, means that either the MS is not outputting ignition signals or that there is a problem with the igniter.

I have replaced the coils and still have the same coil not firing, so it has to be the igniter.

My question now is how it got fried and could a bad write to the VE tables do it?

did you ever flash the firmware without disconnecting the ignitor? do you have your spark output inverted?

I never flashed the MS while in the car till this morning. It all started while tuning and I had a bad write and changed a lot of settings in MS. One setting that was changed was the spark inversion.

That could very well have done it, particularly if you sat with the MS on but the engine not running for any length of time. Spark inverted out = on would have caused the spark outputs to be driven high at rest, causing the primaries to conduct continuously. Why Mitsubishi didn't beef up the igniter such that it was capable of dealing with continuous dissipation is beyond me, but this does seem to hurt them.

Then I guess it is a new igniter or COPs then. This whole thing is just pissing me off.