WAY better wasted spark option

[potatomash]

I use Mitsubishi GTO coils on mine haha, pretty cheap and reliable using off the shelf coil wires

[LowR3V'in]

one negative is it looks ugly as hell if you have a huge coil sitting on the valve cover :( so if you do it mount it somewhere else

What about multiple single coils?

[nando]

i still dont get the point of wasted spark

let's put it this way, since I ditched the stock ignition setup back in 2007 I've spent exactly $0 on caps, rotors, and other stuff that seems to need replacing every couple years.

Even my full COP setup cost less than one Cap & Rotor and that included new plug wires and 2 spare coils.

[Doorgoo]

Dead thread revival lol... I'm using this set up wired to my whodwho megasquirt. I'm sure this will illicit "if you need to ask then you shouldn't he using it" comments but I can't get it running. From what the wiring says, pin 1 should connect to ign3, and so forth? What should nominal dwell be? I'm sorry if these are dumb questions, I'd just like to get it running

[Jaxx_]

Dead thread revival lol... I'm using this set up wired to my whodwho megasquirt. I'm sure this will illicit "if you need to ask then you shouldn't he using it" comments but I can't get it running. From what the wiring says, pin 1 should connect to ign3, and so forth? What should nominal dwell be? I'm sorry if these are dumb questions, I'd just like to get it running

Wiring will depend on your application, and I don't know enough about the PnP setup to say. Keep in mind that the megasquirt pulls ground on the coil, so ensure that you have 12v at the coil when the car is in start and run. Technically, even if you have the coils wired incorrectly, you should be able to swap ign wires around to get the car to fire. Because it is wasted spark, make sure to keep each cyl pair matched to each coil.

Dwell depends on the coil--start with 3.5ms and go up in .5ms increments if you have spark issues. Some coils(like LS) like lots of dwell and can ask for 6ms without deterioration of the coil, and no increase in spark power.

Check out this video for some practical experiments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1WH0OExQyA


I'll mention because it might also be relevant for you: if your coil is hot to the touch (not just warm from underhood heat) you might have the dwell set too high, or incorrectly--going high/inverted vs going low.

[2002tiiguy]

Pin 4 is positive, 3 is 1/6, 2 is 2/5, 1 is 3/4

[mrlucretius]

My wasted spark build

Hey,

Thanks for this thread.

I went ahead and built this system.

It turns out I did not have to drill any holes in the chassis to mount it! There was a threaded hole, and a through hole I was able to use, it was just luck that the brackets and my design just happened to line up to those stock features.

The only issue I had was that the MS2PNP docs had the A + C outputs backwards! I was able to swap the wires for 1+6, 3+4 cylinders on the coil pack and she starts right up.

Read the PDF for the coil pack. I set dwell 3.4ms and duration 1.7ms based on my ~13V nominal voltage and an 8 amp limit on the QuadSpark.

See some photos here:

https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=409986

Thanks!

[nando]

Nice!

Still haven't had to touch my COP setup once in like 7 years. So yeah, it's "fancy" and "complicated" but I haven't had to think about it since I put it together.

Actually, my E30 has had wasted spark/COP longer now than it had been stock under my ownership. I'm pretty sure I put in at least 4 cap and rotors, plus a set of plug wires, and God knows how many sets of plugs prior to that..

[McGyver]

Yep, you'll need a total of three BIP373's.

I have the DIYPNP so it was a breeze to modify. Had the board modified and coil wired up for a test start in about an hour.

I know this is a dumb question, but I'm getting a little overwhelmed with all the MegaSquirt learning. I built a MegaSquirtII V3.0 board, used 3 BIPs to enable me to use wasted spark.

How is this wired? 3 MS outputs trigger each of the 3 coils, 4th plug is the high voltage input? Then voltage goes through the spark plug wire and ground is the cathode on the plug?

So that means this is wired directly to MS and I don't need a quad spark?

Thanks, I'm confused, and need to read the mega manual a few more times...

[citizen_insane]

I know this is a dumb question, but I'm getting a little overwhelmed with all the MegaSquirt learning. I built a MegaSquirtII V3.0 board, used 3 BIPs to enable me to use wasted spark.

How is this wired? 3 MS outputs trigger each of the 3 coils, 4th plug is the high voltage input? Then voltage goes through the spark plug wire and ground is the cathode on the plug?

So that means this is wired directly to MS and I don't need a quad spark?

Thanks, I'm confused, and need to read the mega manual a few more times...

BIP373 replaces the quad spark. In fact, the quad spark is just 4 BIP 373's in an enclosure w/ some resistors and stuff (basically, it might be slightly more complicated than that).


The logic flow is:
MS3 Output (any allowed) -> BIP373 -> Coil -> SparkPlugs


The BIP 373 is ground switching the coil and the spark plug should fire when the MS3 is no longer grounded (goes high).



This thread is very good, make sure to read it all the way through because there are corrections:

http://www.msextra.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=131&t=42038

This is a diagram I made based off that thread/my setup:

[saucers]

Have you ever been looking for something in a cabinet and it's right in front of your face but you can't find it.
Thats how I feel getting this wired up.
HELP! What am I missing here?

MSPNP from diyautotune, my settings are:



Quadspark and Bosch 0221503002 is wired the following, with pin 4 on the coil wired to green wire 12v from the stock coil:

[citizen_insane]

You didn't mention what issue you're actually having. Are you confused how to wire it up? Do you have it wired up and it's not working? Have you verified you have spark? Have you verified your timing? 97°BTDC seems high. My car was setup at 90° and 84° is a number I see on the internet fairly often as well. You will need to verify all the settings in the MSPNP tune because in my experience they are not necessarily correct.

[saucers]

Seems to be wired correctly, has spark.
Turns over, but doesn't start for some reason
Car was tuned by ForcedFirebird sometime back

After seeing mrlucretius settings, my cranking dwell seems a bit lower than his.
Going to give that a try

[Digitalwave]

Tooth #1 angle should be 84* give or take. You'll have to verify your actual tooth #1 angle using a timing light to be sure (mine was about 84.6* to be absolutely perfect). This would make your timing table off by 13*.

[mrlucretius]

Hi People,

Regarding the battery tray coilpack / quadspark setup:

I ran into some trouble with the coil + drivers overheating.

I was stuck in traffic idling on a hot day, and then I lost two cylinders...

I thought I blew one of the drivers, but then I read they have overtemp protection.

So once everything cooled down, it started up fine.

I am planning to install a heat shield between the exhaust header and the coil pack to avoid direct radiant heating.

Also, I may put a heatsink between the quadspark and the coil bracket plate.

Finally, I did reduce the dwell down to 2.5 from 3.5ms to reduce the current and thus internal heating of the quadspark. So far no more overheating issues.

Really, upon reading more, you are supposed to dial back the dwell until you get missing at idle, then turn it up a few tenths. I bet I can back off dwell even more to reduce current more.

For this setup, as far as I understand, since there are 3 coils (instead of one), the duration setting does not really matter, unless you can rev to ~18k rpm (where duration would force reduction of dwell at high rpm), not gonna happen on an M20.

As a reminder: for my high compression motor build, the single stock coil setup would start misfiring at ~6krpm or so due to dwell being reduced. That is why I went wasted spark. Three coils can fire 3 times as fast before duration starts reducing dwell and thus spark energy.

Will post a pic when I get that all put together.

-Alex