kaldek

I thought the surging was from the ECU running the mixture lean when in 'closed loop' mode to meet EC emissions testing. Plus there's an issue you haven't mentioned, which is the hesitation when the ECu switches from 'closed loop' mode to mapped mode. Even just fitting O2 sensor eliminators to fix this makes the bike more rideable (I know - I did this for more than 18 months when I was between PCs).

The "most common" surging is indeed likely caused by the system going closed loop.

Fitting O2 eliminators should - if the PGM-FI acts anything like every other vehicle on the planet (and it probably doesn't, coz Honda is "special") - force the system to default back to an assumed reading of 0.5 volts from the O2 sensor, which lets you then tune the fuel injection however you like with your Power commander. If you disconnect the O2 sensor on a car, this is the exact behaviour - it assumes 0.5 volts (14.7 AFR) - but brings up the Check Engine light. Car folks who want to bypass closed loop fit O2 simulators (often called EFIE) which send a simulated O2 signal of 0.5 volts with the right waveform.

Kal... Nice vid!!

Completely unrelated but... what does the little toggle switch on the LHS black inner fairing you've installed do???

Heh you have eyes like a hawk dontcha!

It's my Autotune/map switch for the PCV.

So you will lose your HISS?

Yeah, I'll lose HISS. I'm kinda unsure about how much I care about that.

Makes life easier if I ever lose my keys though!

Oh, worth mentioning: the 2006+ ECU is freakin' TINY.

Alright, the parts arrived today (GRATZ SEBSPEED!!!). I've checked the connections and marked all plugs. It's a non-ABS wiring harness, which is good. Things that stand out as definitely needing attention are:

• This harness has hazard diodes. My bike does not have a hazard switch or diodes. Depending on how my turn position relay is wired up, I may or may not have to do some re-wiring or jumpering.
  
• The Vehicle Speed sensor connector is different. No big deal; re-wire job.
  
• The indicator plugs are different. Expected this; also no big deal.
  
• The license plate plug is different. Also no big deal.
  

I will need to do some wire tracing for the turn signal relays. Might try and do that tonight. I think if I can sort out all the possible issues with the sub-harness I will be in a good position to move forward like a Vector - with both direction and MAGNITUDE. Oh yeah!!

I suppose this means the Viffer has a closed loop ignition dwell system then. Keep us posted.

Which would mean that 2 wire 1.6 ohm sticks will work fine?

Yeah, it should mean that, if I'm anywhere near right. Which, I'm also about. We either wait to see what happens with ranger's bike after a few weeks, or he manages to hook up a current clamp to one of the coils with an oscilloscope and we look for a good or bad waveform. All the material I can find points to a reading of 7 amps with a good waveform meaning it's all A-OK.

Hey rangerscott, what are the chances of finding someone in your area that could do a current test using a low amp current probe and an oscilloscope on your primary coil wires?

If you could run that test, we could confirm if the coils are being saturated or if they're working OK. 7 amps of current with a nice clean "ramp" on the waveform is what we'd be looking for.

Well, I'm running Raid 0 on my desktop and I think one of my harddrives just took a dump so my time is going to be switched. Yea! Happy birthday to me.

You didn't RAID-0 your OS drive did you? Naughty!!

She rode better today. Felt pretty much normal with the coil sticks.

I suppose this means the Viffer has a closed loop ignition dwell system then. Keep us posted.

It would be interesting to see what the spec is on the 6th gen coils. I have a feeling they have built in ignitors judging by the extra wire.

They do! They're one of very few 3-wire coils that seem to be out there in use on bikes. Not sure what the VFR1200 uses.

100V is the minimum. The GSXR manual says: 80V and more. I'm wondering if these coils might not be strong enough? I would think so. Would you need a stronger spark with an low compression or high compression engine?

Stronger, if I recall correctly. Something to do with high compression making it harder to ignite the mixture.

I don't think your coils are a problem at all. The more I look into this, the more it seems to confirm that the problem is just going to turn out to be an incompatibility between the 5th-gen ECU and the newer coils due to the required dwell time.

Wow. I was trying to do some peak voltage tests using my oscilloscope and just couldn't get a reading lower than 268 volts when it should apparently be 100 volts. I'm thinking WTF, but then I find out that my oscilloscope is more sensitive than the equipment generally used for peak voltage testing. So, why am I getting such a weird result?

Apparently, when the secondary coil magnetic field collapses, it generates a "high voltage flyback" pulse into the primary coil that lasts not longer than ten microseconds (not milliseconds - MICRO seconds). At the 1 million samples-per-second rate of my oscilloscope, I'm way faster than your average peak voltage detector at 1 million samples per second but I've seen evidence it loses the plot after about 150,000 and starts to alias the signal. That explains why I don't see the true peak which is somewhere around 400 volts. I'm seeing 268 volts, and a peak voltage tester would only see 100 volts because it can't sample fast enough to see the initial burst at all, instead measuring a peak of 100 volts because that's all it can see at its level of accuracy.

Check out how fast this pulse is:

You can see where that pulse narrows is where my oscilloscope loses its marbles and can't see that tiny 400 volt sliver. This graph was taken by a professional grade peak voltage tester somewhere above 20 million samples per second. Dayum!

I'll keep my eye out on some cbr coils at a good price.

CBR coils are also 1.6 ohm.

Naw. The 6th gen t-body is working fine. Just the starter valves are needing to be set. I felt it. Let me test both and make an executive decision on whether I'm sane or insane.

Cool. About the only thing we haven't discussed is the dwell time for the coils, and whether the ones you're using work best with a much different dwell time than what the ECU is providing. Less resistance would affect dwell time I guess. Maybe it's too much and you're overcharging the coils? Again, I could be talking out my rear-end here.

Watching the oscilloscope, you can see that power is rapidly switched on and off to the coil. The time that the coil spends "on" is the dwell time and if it's too short the coil won't charge up enough. Too long and it builds up too much.

Here's a great article on dwell time calibration. In short, they appear to say you can't just dump any coil on and hope for the best.

They say on that page that if the dwell map is pre-computed at the factory and does not measure the amps, then you're going to cook something in short order.

NEVER substitute the coil for another type on a mapped system. The ECU will not know you have done this and will still turn the coil on for a certain time, if your new coil charges quicker (lower inductance) then the coil or ECU will be damaged. If a slower charging coil is fitted (higher inductance) you will get a poor spark.

Alternatively, the ECU could be "closed loop" in that it monitors the coil current and dynamically adjusts the dwell time so that the coil tops out at 7 amps. I guess this means that your system on the VFR was always 7 amps, but used a longer dwell time to get there since the inductance/resistance was higher.

So, if the 5th-gen VFR uses mapped dwell, you're hosed. If it uses closed-loop dwell control, apparently you should be alright.

Bike ran fine before the coil sticks. Just sluggish taking off from a stop and at low rpms (4k and climbing up to cruiseing rpms). Right when taking off the engine would bog and I'd have to give it more throttle. I'm going do another test ride and mount my camera to view the dash with both sets of coils.

And you're sure that's not caused by the 6th-gen throttle bodies yeah? I didn't see how long you had been riding around with the 6th-gen throttle assembly before trying the coils.

As they say - change ONE thing, then test it. When you're 100% convinced it's working, then (and only then) change something else. Not that I listen to my own advice though; no, I'm as guilty of this as anyone.

I know I'm not worried about the spark plugs since I've decoded the 5th gen iridiums, 6th gen iridiums, and gsxr plugs and they're all 9 rating heat range. Pretty much just cosmetics.

Maybe describe the poor running problems again? You said it was sluggish?

The best way to figure out if this is going to damage the CDI/ECU is to hook a lab scope up to a coil with the bike running and compare the ignition patterns between the two different coils setups.

If rangerscott is willing to buy one of the $60 pocket oscilloscopes like what I have, he could well do that. "Lab Scope" is an automotive term which generally means $$$$$. They're just oscilloscopes.

It would probably also require a low amp current probe as the input to the oscilloscope, clamped over the coil wire for inductive pickup. I've just ordered one, and it's being shipped to Sebspeed's house right now.

Maybe a 1.6 ohm resistor on the ground(ecu trigger) side of the coil would work?

I'm actually starting to think that these coils need to be given the power they want, rather than trying to affect it by adding resistors into the circuit. It's all my fault - it was a stupid idea to talk about resistors in the first place because I knew enough to be an ass and not much else.

So I guess the last question then is whether the current pulled by each coil will affect the ECU. And if not, then Ranger's problems with the bike being sluggish are something else altogether and I need to STFU.

Why not run two separate 12v feeds and then have the ground side of the paired coils grounded by a single driver? The ecu will think its still firing a single 3.2 ohm coil, it shouldn't care if the other driver is controlling nothing.

Duhh...yeah of course you're right. It's a GROUND trigger not a positive trigger.

Man I've really got my "muppet" hat on at the moment.

I've used these coils in many different applications with stand alone engine management, its always 12v on one side, ground trigger on the other. The only time I've seen a ballast resistor used on an ignition system is with older vehicles with a points system.

I have yet to see a modern coil pack use anything less than a 12v feed. You want to have the highest possible primary voltage so it can be stepped up to a high secondary voltage, 6 volts on the primary side just ain't gonna cut it with a modern high compression, high rpm motorcycle engine.

Kostritzer is right. I just hooked up the oscilloscope to my CBR1000RR and confirmed that the coils are indeed getting a 12 volt feed. They are also most definitely 1.6 ohm coils.

So, take everything I said about 6 volts and kick it in the nuts. The coils are 12 volts, so there is no danger of burning anything out. Since it's a ground trigger, it's also hard to say if there will be any problems with the coils pulling 7 amps rather than 3.

At this point, it seems that I've been talking out of my ass.

If anyone would like to toss out some fact and/or theory about putting COP's to use on a 4th gen, I'd love to hear it. Been wanting to do this for quite a while! The 4th gen has 4 individual coils, so it stands to reason that if I get COP's that have the same resistance as my existing coils, and have a 2-wire setup, that it will work as stock?

If your existing coil resistances are 3.2 ohm, you'll need to find 3.2 ohm COP units unless we work out if a ballast resistor solution will work.

Could this be as simple as splicing a 1.6 ohm resistor on the hot wire to the 1.6ohm COP?

That's what I don't know yet. Right now I think I know enough to get into trouble.

What I need to freakin' do is get out to my CBR, hook up the oscilloscope to a coil and confirm what the darn volts are. If it's 6 volt it will confirm what I've said so far and we can move on to talking about resistors.

I'm thinking you may have to run the coils in series like those guys did with the ZXR, you would then only need to use two coil drivers, and run it as a wasted spark system. Just make sure you get the correct coils paired up! I don't think the ECU/CDI in these bikes are smart enough to know you're not using two of the coil drivers, could be wrong though.

That being said, I think I remember reading somewhere that the 5th gen had individual cylinder timing, maybe it was fuel trim...can't remember.

Ignore this - read the posts further on.

Wasted spark with two coils in series when the ECU expects there to be four individual coils could be ugly. You would need to have the two coils charged by two separate 12 volt feeds and fire whenever either of those feeds is cut. I'm sure this could be done with a fancy diode arrangement..

But at that point, aren't we getting very complex for the sake of not much in return?

If anyone would like to toss out some fact and/or theory about putting COP's to use on a 4th gen, I'd love to hear it. Been wanting to do this for quite a while! The 4th gen has 4 individual coils, so it stands to reason that if I get COP's that have the same resistance as my existing coils, and have a 2-wire setup, that it will work as stock?

Sometimes I'm just wrong consistently. Ignore everything below here.

If your existing coil resistances are 3.2 ohm, you'll need to find 3.2 ohm COP units unless we work out if a ballast resistor solution will work.

OK, I've measured both of my bikes.

The CBR1000RR has 1.6 ohm resistance on the primary windings (between the pins). The VFR appears to be unmeasurable due to the fact that it uses a transistor; the readings were either 50Kohms or 1Kohm.

I wonder if cbr1000 or 600rr stick coils are 12v and the correct ohms? WhAt did you say, 3.2 ohms?

Yeah 3.2 ohms. I'll test mine tonight on my CBR 1000RR (if I can get to it) and the VFR too.

My oscilloscope will arrive today as well, so I can use that to tell you exactly how many volts they're getting. Wheeee!

Alright. I'll test that tomorrow. This is too much fun to just give up. I've never exceeded without failing. If I had ever stopped before my vehicle and bikes wouldn't be where they are today nor my brain.

Oh, please keep going! If I sounded negative today it was just so you didn't accidentally fry your electrics.