I am using grey shielded cable as supplied by DIYautotune wiring loom kit.

I think I might start looking into upgrading my MS1 to an MS3, its weird that I have only had RPM spikes once during normal driving - or what I assumed to be RPM spikes, it felt like the cut that happens when you write to the MS when driving the car whilst tuning.

a misfire then?

Just revisiting this thread...we'll because its cold outside and happening more. I'm going to check a few other things that have been posted since my last reply. Will report back.

I got the car starting a lot better last year in the cold 2-3 tries at most, still going to try to improve on it because it's inevitable to break a starter and/or skip timing again. With my luck it'll happen at the track.

I have a very similar issue except it is on my ae86. I killed 2 starters and I don't want to kill another now. I have a feeling it has to do with wiring, battery as when I have jump start charger on the car and the engine is spining faster it doesn't happen but I will have to confirm that this sunday most likely when the car is in the workshop overnight.

BUT what throws a spanner in the works is that I have a powerfc which will start it in the cold off the same battery even with a few attempts of starting with megasquirt it will start but still may get stuck once or twice.

I have a strong feeling it is low battery. I can't get it to start from cold but after the water temp shows 16 with the powerfc it will start with the megasquirt. I am a bit stumped with it but have been trying various different things for a couple months as I can't drive the damn thing with it like this,

A few general guidelines:

It's easy to verify cranking timing with a light. Just disconnect the electrical connection to the injectors and have someone crank the starter while you observe the timing. You may need to power your timing gun externally, as some don't like to operate at the lower voltages encountered while cranking. The timing will be jumping around a fair bit, but it should be within 10-20 degrees of what you want. Hint: paint a 1" wide stripe around the timing notch in the pulley with white paint, then use a black paint pen or marker to draw a line on the timing notch itself. This makes it a lot easier to find the mark when it's not precisely where you expect it to be.



Last year, hornetball said that "Unfortunately, I have a MS-I (MSPNP) and a separate cranking advance is not an option for me." This is false:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1329498546



If an engine starts fine on one ECU but is hard to start on another, the problem is probably not the battery. It's the ECU.

Indeed it is. Sorry if I misled anyone in my ignorance. I found the setting a couple of months ago and reduced it from the MSPNP default. The default was 18°BTDC. I changed it to 0°BTDC. This change was a definite improvement.