Any questions you have before you begin buying, building and installing.
By joey120373
#45437
Buddy of mine at work has a 92 ford ranger with a 2.3l 4 cyl engine. He recently put a turbo on it out of a thunderbird.
It actually runs, but not great, so I have managed to convince him that piggy backing a SD will be a fairly easy thing to do and we can get rid of his MAF and get his fuel tuned.
As for spark, initially I thought it used a EDIS system, but it doesn’t, it has a dual spark set up, that ad near as I have been able to research, is basically a modified TFI with the PIP and SPOUT as the crank input and spark output respectively.
Does speeduino support the Old ford TFI? It’s been too long ago I don’t remember if what the SPOUT signal needed to look like.
The PIP signal, is a basic trigger, just on the crank.
The dual spark ignition module takes care of deciding what coil to fire based on another input from the crank sensor.

The spark control is not the main priority at the moment, and i think if I ca get his fuel tuned up good, we will look into getting a crank wheel and sensor off of a later model that uses a 36-1 crank wheel, and ditch the factory low res dual spark all together. But it would be nice to get control of the timing till that point, and it’s only 2 wires.

So if SD does support the old TFI ( ford thick film ignition)
How would I set up the ignition output? It’s been 15 years ago but I know I did it with megasquirt, if I recall I think it was just a 50 duty cycle logic level output.
User avatar
By PSIG
#45441
Welcome! #1 = do a search on "TFI". There are many posts and solutions. Once you have a grip on that (or more questions), we can move to other setup specifics. The 'Bird 2.3T should be straightforward, and there are a few here already, such as @Dalenutbrown. Dual plugs and coil packs are no problem. Check with Dale or others who have done them in order to verify the diagram below is current, but you may prefer to skip the TFI module and just use the sensor signal directly in Basic Distributor mode.

David

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By joey120373
#45443
PSIG,
Thanks, I did a search and found a few things, I also found some old MS info and it’s coming back to me.

I am wondering if I use the “dual channel signal conditioner“
That I got from you, at least it has your handle on it, would this board still require the blocking diode?

So as I understand it, the PIP is a 12 volt square wave signal that is sent from the TFI module to the ECU for rpm and crank angle. The SPOUT signal from the ECU tells the TFI module when to fire the coil and also determines the dwell.

What I’m still trying to fugure our, and this is my old age showing. Is that I remember working on these back in the day, and I thought the PIP signal had the jumper in line that you removed to set base timing. But that would interrupt the tach signal to the ECU, so the jumper must have been in the SPOUT signal.

This project is still weeks or no the away, unfortunately my cohort and I both are working 17 hour days for the next 10-12 days, don’t know if we can get a day or two free to start wiring the SD in.
By joey120373
#45444
This is the board I currently have, in its description it states that it accepts most any input signal, but no description of what that might be.

Adding a diode is simple enough, but if this board would trigger on a 12v square wave then I wouldn’t have to modify anything.
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User avatar
By PSIG
#45451
Yes, it will handle 12V positive/ground signals, such as Bosch, TIF, or GM LS 12V signals. Other types may only handle signals with both (+) and (-) wave-forms, needed to "reset" between pulses. In this case, a full and (relatively) expensive conditioner is not required, where a simple 10-cent blocking diode will do. However, if you already have a conditioner then that's cool — use that instead of the diode if you like.

:arrow: However, before we go too far down this rabbit hole, I have some confusion. If it has a distributor with spark plug wires, it's not dual plug. Or it has a dual plug conversion. Or it uses dual coil packs (not the distributor) to fire the dual-plugs. Please confirm which version it is.

Use care when referring to MS info, as it is another similar system (also "EFI") but very different in many regards, especially setup and settings. Speeduino is not related to MS, nor an improvement, or fork, or anything else. It happens to use the same tuning interface. General EFI concepts can be valid of course, but specifics are dangerous. Try to stick to Speeduino info whenever possible for best retention of remaining sanity. :lol:
By joey120373
#45455
[
:arrow: However, before we go too far down this rabbit hole, I have some confusion. If it has a distributor with spark plug wires, it's not dual plug. Or it has a dual plug conversion. Or it uses dual coil packs (not the distributor) to fire the dual-plugs. Please confirm which version it is.
This is a 4 cylinder, dual plug per cylinder motor. It does not have a distributor. It uses a crank mounted 2 tooth Hall effect sensor, with a second 1 tooth sensor on the crank as well. When I first saw the coil packs I assumed it was an EDIS set up, but after looking at the wiring diagram I realized that , as near as I can tell, it is more like a dual TFI ignition, with that single tooth crank pulse telling the ignition module what coil to fire. So i essence, it’s like two separate TFI modules and coils, but the single 180 degree hall window designates which one is active.

I am aware that MS is a completely different system, I was one of the first few to use it way back when, it was a very basic fuel only controller, later they developed single channel spark control, but that required a separate board, so I had 2 boards on my Honda. Tuner studio was still a long way off at that point as well.
MS is different, but the manual is a great reference for interfacing OEM hardware.
User avatar
By PSIG
#45593
OK, thanks for that. So, the system is Ford DIS, predecessor of EDIS. Oversimplified, DIS uses TFI-style triggering (simple SPOUT pulse to fire "now") and requires a cycle (cam or sync signal), whereas EDIS does not need cam sync and uses SAW signal triggering for timing (special signal attribute for timing that Speeduino does not produce).

At this point, you can decide for yourselves how to approach this. Either using the DIS as-is (a form of TFI function), running separate PIPs to Speeduino for CKP and CMP signals (you'll need a diode in there), and using IGN1 out as the SPOUT signal to the DIS module (same as TFI). Similar to the TFI diagram, but with obviously different wiring.

Or, delete/ignore the DIS module, route crank and cam signals to Speeduino, and output IGN signals to a standard 4-channel coil driver (Bosch 211, Quad-Spark, DIY 4ch, etc) to the coil packs. Other benefits (besides removing a black box), are the removal of timing control limitations, e.g., for anti-lag, and easy swap to a high-res crank wheel.

A random site with some useful info on this system is here and here, and I've put their DIS ICM diagrams below. Hope that helps.

David
Ford Dual-Plug Lima ICM LX230.jpg
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By joey120373
#45608
Yea, thank you, those are some of the same pictures I found. Searching around it looks like others that have used aftermarket controllers have treated the ignition system as though it were a TFI distributor. Evidently the ignition module only needs a single SPOUT, and it fires the correct coil.

I was really excited about this project, as I think we could have had it installed and running in a few hours. Unfortunately the guy decided to quit only a couple of days after we made plans to try and get it done.

It’s a real bummer, now I have to wait until I get my old ford up and running.

I still have a 4 wheeler, a 1000cc Vtwin that I might have a crack at. Coming into winter now so such things may have to wait.
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By PSIG
#45610
Well, that sucks, and I've been there before with clients as well. :( For future reference (or others doing DIS), note the crank and cam signals (CKP and CID) are blended to the DIS module, so it effectively sees an 8+1 signal (9 pulses) across 720°. The signals can be shared with Speeduino, but would have to be separated to it, again using a diode to isolate the two signals from each other for Speeduino while blending them for DIS.

Separated, the signals would be seen by Speeduino as 4/1 using Dual Wheel decoder. This would be true whether using the DIS module or deleting it. I hope that helps, and good luck with your next project!

David

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