This one is cut/pasted from Rx7club.com. Any info would be greatly appreciated.



Hey guys, I've got a 20B FC I'm working on for a buddy of mine that is having some problems.. One minute, it seems to work well. The next, it's as if there's something jacked witth the ignition o something else. We were stranded with the car at a gas station for a good two hours or so late toninght. I've been pulling my hair outt ttrying to figure out why. I got what I thought was a decentt map loaded earlier this evening that I made and got the car to fire up, idle, throttle and run pretty consistently. Although it was still having some problems below 1500rpm, I felt confident that it could be driven around the neighbourhood. We stopped once to get gas and there was no problem. However, about 10-15 min later after some cruising, we stopped to get gas again and justt as we were pulling towards the station the car died and wouldn't restart. We tried everytthing -- original map, my map, leaning it out, richening it up, adding and removing primer, removing and deflooding the engine, etc. all to no avail. We had to tow the car home. We suspectt that the ECU/fuel pump may have some power & wiring issues as its wired into the stock ECU but my gut ttells me it's something else such as a possible firmware bug. Does anybody have any other info? I am a bit apprehensive now to drive the vehicle tomorrow due to this even if I do manage to get it started. It is currently running Build 28 with Halwin 1.59 but I do have earlier firmware builds (but not Build 29).



Any info would be greatly appreciated.



Thanks,



B



(yes Mike this is your old motor, ECU, and wiring harness on Reese's car -- I tried your original map w/ the timing set properly and itt still acted the same way even tthough we could originally use it as a benchmark to start the engine with... something is going on here )

 

They used to stall if you were making map adjustments sometimes while it was running, though this has not happened to me since i got a V2. Was the ECU itself hot?





I've got firmware 29 if you'd like to try it Brian.

 

I don't remember tthe ECU itself being hot, no, but I can look for that today. It was odd; the car was driving fine, albeit on a map that was barely in the ballpark, tthen itt just shut off and wouldn't restart at all when we pulled into a gas station after about 15 min of runtime.



B

 

yep, thats what happened to me! when its the ecu the ecu usually looks like its working (ie you get rpm signals, etc) but theres no output side. i had one occasion where it did go into boot mode though.



i did have better luck when i let the ecu just swing in the air, mine didnt like it under the carpet.



just so you guys know the harness is basically a stock harness with the haltech connectors on it. there is a condensor on the ecu power wire, ive added extra grounds too, none of that seemed to help.

 

Brian ran new power and switched sources with an extra fuse block. Nothing came of that...



It's weird because I've had no major issues for a year and now this... It ran fine before we pulled the motor. I wonder what might have happened?



Reese

 

maybe it is the harness then? fd harnesses do that same thing, the ignition pickup wires break.



um the swtiched power on my harness came from the stock fc spot, the x-15 connector, black with yellow did the fuel (like stock fc) and black with white does ignition (stock thats the emissions power).



paul and i thought about the power source too, if you watch the battery correction screen it seems "jumpy"?



thats why we added the condensor, but it didnt do much

 

I really hope that it isn't the harness. I don't want to have to pay the cost of a new one even if I do sell them! They aren't that cheap! Heh. We'll see what happens.



Mike, I know where you were pulling power from. It's the same plug that the wiper motors are run through.



Reese

 

yeah, i dunno. we were kinda fighting the same thing. incedentally my e11 did the same shutting down bit on a WRX and i think it might have done it to pauls yellow beater once or twice too.

 

ok guys, I have good news and puzzling news...



The good news is that I got the car running 20 minutes after I started goofing with it after work. I reloaded one of my original maps that worked for a year. It's still a bit hard to start but I attibute that to the fact that it only has about 8 miles on it.



The puzzling part: It's pushing out massive amounts of fuel from the exhuast. I've got it idling at about 1000 once warmed up. While it's idling, bluish-whitish smoke is coming out fairly heavily and it will knock you on your *** if you stand around it too long. It's super rich smelling.



At idle it's right around 3.2ms and I'm only getting 1% or less fuel correction from any of the correction maps. (battery, etc).



Is there anything you can offer? I'm willing to send my map to whomever might want to look at it. I'll be honest... I don't have much clue as far as the ignition maps go so a little guidance there wouldn't hurt either!



Thanks!



Reese

 

What AFR is it idling at?