Ignition Upgrades
- Thread starter R2D
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Re: Ignition Upgrades
I want to thank you Rodney and his wife, Nadia for making the 'special' arrangement to do the upgrade. I can really feel the instance improvement in torque and the engine is smoother and quiter! It's definitely worth the money for the simple but yet satisfying ride. Two thumbs up and two toes up!
I want to thank you Rodney and his wife, Nadia for making the 'special' arrangement to do the upgrade. I can really feel the instance improvement in torque and the engine is smoother and quiter! It's definitely worth the money for the simple but yet satisfying ride. Two thumbs up and two toes up!
R2D
Well-Known Member
Re: Ignition Upgrades
For the sake of the shop's / my integrity, i would like to further explain the inadequacies of the car's standard ignition system.
1. Transistorised ignition systems. This system was introduced many year ago to do away with the traditional contact point system. In the contact point system, there was a small condensor wired into the charging lead (which leads to the coil -ve) to suppress the amount of electrical sparks and hence RF noise too. the intention was never to prevent a reverse EMF from harming anything cos there is nothing to harn except contact points. In the transistorised ignition system, a reversed biased diode is placed on the output circuit to prevent the reverse voltage from harming the conducting transistor which is no longer a NPN or PNP type but rather a Field Effect Transistor. All the necessary components can be built on a silicon wafer wasily to build the IC. Presently, all the coils these days have built in ignition amplifiers connected to the coils themselves.
2. Electrolytic capacitors of sufficient value cannot be made to those miniature SMD sizes and a few micro farads is all that can be mustered. So the bosch and hitachi ignition packs that you see are all solid state devices with everything on a silicon wafer. there are some SMD components in there but those perform biasing functions to get the FET to perform the necessary way. (saturated mode, high current)
3. In a standard production car, the manufacturer requires the car to perform for the life of a car. Electrolytics do not last a life time and this manufacturers have leaned away from incorporating.
4. The amount of energy that can can be stored within an inductor is given by the rise time of the current flowing into it since the maximum current is simply 14.2V / ~1.5ohms. the faster the rise time, the greater the power potential. But due to cost constraints, manufacturers limit the dwell time to 20-30msec which does not allow the instantaneous current to reach the 9 amps or so.
5. Talking about charging current, the wires in your ignition system was never built to handle 9 amps constant. The thin wires is just sufficient to conduct some power to the coil. This is akin to your hi-fi system, the cheap 50cent/m wire will also make music but sufficiently thick wires allow the bass to come much stronger as the current surges are able to flow and thus control the woofer cone.
6. To really get lots of electrical power at the spark plug tips, you will need Capacitor Dsicharge Ignition system, thick wires to carry the current to the coils and thereafter metal cored HT cables to the plugs. In car these days, the ignition system is fixed cos the coil and ignition pack are built together. So in order to feed the current to the coils, you need to change the wires to something with a little more cross-sectional diameter. (around 12-16AWG would be good.)
7. The coil itself is an inductor and that will mean that as an incoming electrical charge comes in, it will initially resist the charge by developing its own charge. Once past this transient stage, the inductor flows like a piece of wire subject to the normal conductance of copper and overall length of wire on the primary coil. the dwell time that is specified allows the coil to go through the transient stage and at most a couple of msec of the conductance stage as complete conductance would mean mini "short circuits". with the addition of a capacitor, the electrical charge is stored externally to the coil and the availability of the same voltage levels (cos in parallel) but with much lower equivalent series resistance (natural characteristics of a capacitor) allows better power transfer during the end of the transient stage there the power can be dumped into the coil.
8. Now comes the matching part. Fitting a capacitor that is too low will not allow sufficient storage. Fitting too large a capacitor will result in the contact points of the main electrical relay wearing out even faster as the contact spark becomes bigger. So i turned to impedence matching to meashre the reactance of the coil and reverse calculate to find a capacitor that will meet the needs of the equivalent inductor.
9. Now for some figures, the voltage across the input terminals of the ignition coil DOES NOT see an increase. (increased voltage does not equal increased power, you need both voltage and current to give more power). As mentioned before, there is better power transfer and you can see that in the form of a brighter spark.
10. Do your plugs wear faster? Yes they do. that's why i ask if owners are using iridium plugs. those copper or normal alloy plugs just burn away.
For the sake of the shop's / my integrity, i would like to further explain the inadequacies of the car's standard ignition system.
1. Transistorised ignition systems. This system was introduced many year ago to do away with the traditional contact point system. In the contact point system, there was a small condensor wired into the charging lead (which leads to the coil -ve) to suppress the amount of electrical sparks and hence RF noise too. the intention was never to prevent a reverse EMF from harming anything cos there is nothing to harn except contact points. In the transistorised ignition system, a reversed biased diode is placed on the output circuit to prevent the reverse voltage from harming the conducting transistor which is no longer a NPN or PNP type but rather a Field Effect Transistor. All the necessary components can be built on a silicon wafer wasily to build the IC. Presently, all the coils these days have built in ignition amplifiers connected to the coils themselves.
2. Electrolytic capacitors of sufficient value cannot be made to those miniature SMD sizes and a few micro farads is all that can be mustered. So the bosch and hitachi ignition packs that you see are all solid state devices with everything on a silicon wafer. there are some SMD components in there but those perform biasing functions to get the FET to perform the necessary way. (saturated mode, high current)
3. In a standard production car, the manufacturer requires the car to perform for the life of a car. Electrolytics do not last a life time and this manufacturers have leaned away from incorporating.
4. The amount of energy that can can be stored within an inductor is given by the rise time of the current flowing into it since the maximum current is simply 14.2V / ~1.5ohms. the faster the rise time, the greater the power potential. But due to cost constraints, manufacturers limit the dwell time to 20-30msec which does not allow the instantaneous current to reach the 9 amps or so.
5. Talking about charging current, the wires in your ignition system was never built to handle 9 amps constant. The thin wires is just sufficient to conduct some power to the coil. This is akin to your hi-fi system, the cheap 50cent/m wire will also make music but sufficiently thick wires allow the bass to come much stronger as the current surges are able to flow and thus control the woofer cone.
6. To really get lots of electrical power at the spark plug tips, you will need Capacitor Dsicharge Ignition system, thick wires to carry the current to the coils and thereafter metal cored HT cables to the plugs. In car these days, the ignition system is fixed cos the coil and ignition pack are built together. So in order to feed the current to the coils, you need to change the wires to something with a little more cross-sectional diameter. (around 12-16AWG would be good.)
7. The coil itself is an inductor and that will mean that as an incoming electrical charge comes in, it will initially resist the charge by developing its own charge. Once past this transient stage, the inductor flows like a piece of wire subject to the normal conductance of copper and overall length of wire on the primary coil. the dwell time that is specified allows the coil to go through the transient stage and at most a couple of msec of the conductance stage as complete conductance would mean mini "short circuits". with the addition of a capacitor, the electrical charge is stored externally to the coil and the availability of the same voltage levels (cos in parallel) but with much lower equivalent series resistance (natural characteristics of a capacitor) allows better power transfer during the end of the transient stage there the power can be dumped into the coil.
8. Now comes the matching part. Fitting a capacitor that is too low will not allow sufficient storage. Fitting too large a capacitor will result in the contact points of the main electrical relay wearing out even faster as the contact spark becomes bigger. So i turned to impedence matching to meashre the reactance of the coil and reverse calculate to find a capacitor that will meet the needs of the equivalent inductor.
9. Now for some figures, the voltage across the input terminals of the ignition coil DOES NOT see an increase. (increased voltage does not equal increased power, you need both voltage and current to give more power). As mentioned before, there is better power transfer and you can see that in the form of a brighter spark.
10. Do your plugs wear faster? Yes they do. that's why i ask if owners are using iridium plugs. those copper or normal alloy plugs just burn away.
wt_know
Well-Known Member
Re: Ignition Upgrades
hi,
a. do the ignition upgrade works on oem spark plugs ? i mean it must produce the "boost" that it should be and no need to pair with performance spark plugs to feel the boost.
b. if it works with oem spark plugs, will it shorthen the lifespan ? i presume the oem spark plugs are not copper. is it best is to change spark plugs at every 30K (that's my 1 year milleage). hence, i presume at 30K or 1 year (at the same time) we should also change the "capacitor" due to wear&tear to maintain its optimal performance ?
thanks !
hi,
a. do the ignition upgrade works on oem spark plugs ? i mean it must produce the "boost" that it should be and no need to pair with performance spark plugs to feel the boost.
b. if it works with oem spark plugs, will it shorthen the lifespan ? i presume the oem spark plugs are not copper. is it best is to change spark plugs at every 30K (that's my 1 year milleage). hence, i presume at 30K or 1 year (at the same time) we should also change the "capacitor" due to wear&tear to maintain its optimal performance ?
thanks !
R2D;454931 said:
Re: Ignition Upgrades
i'll try to answer your 1st question. i have the ignition upgrade on my stock E90 320i and i'm still on the original spark plugs.
i cant remember the exact mileage when i installed it probably abt 30+k km. i'm now abt 51+k km. car is 4 yr 1 month old.
as for the boost, it's really subjective. however, i can see the fuel savings. my ride can now hit avg of 500 to 550 km per full tank if i don't WOT. 80% city, 20% highway. i used to struggle to hit 500km per tank.
i'll try to answer your 1st question. i have the ignition upgrade on my stock E90 320i and i'm still on the original spark plugs.
i cant remember the exact mileage when i installed it probably abt 30+k km. i'm now abt 51+k km. car is 4 yr 1 month old.
as for the boost, it's really subjective. however, i can see the fuel savings. my ride can now hit avg of 500 to 550 km per full tank if i don't WOT. 80% city, 20% highway. i used to struggle to hit 500km per tank.
wt_know
Well-Known Member
Re: Ignition Upgrades
thanks for your feedback.
i'm struggling to hit 500km per tank too. however, when cruising on NSH the FC is damn good (10.7 KM/L) for a 2L 4pot car
conclusion, FC is heavily fluctuated based on stop/go traffic and WOT/brake in city driving. no gadget can help. hehehe
thanks for your feedback.
i'm struggling to hit 500km per tank too. however, when cruising on NSH the FC is damn good (10.7 KM/L) for a 2L 4pot car
conclusion, FC is heavily fluctuated based on stop/go traffic and WOT/brake in city driving. no gadget can help. hehehe
edisonsoul
Well-Known Member
Re: Ignition Upgrades
Hi Rodney,
Could you PM me the price for the setup? Thanks!
Hi Rodney,
Could you PM me the price for the setup? Thanks!
jinooi
Well-Known Member
Re: Ignition Upgrades
dude, when other people reply to your questions, will you stop refuting whatever testimonials you have received?
it seems like you already have you own preconceived conclusions of what is what's not, so why even bother asking?
wt_know, you are one funny guy...
dude, when other people reply to your questions, will you stop refuting whatever testimonials you have received?
it seems like you already have you own preconceived conclusions of what is what's not, so why even bother asking?
wt_know, you are one funny guy...
wt_know;471459 said:thanks for your feedback.
i'm struggling to hit 500km per tank too. however, when cruising on NSH the FC is damn good (10.7 KM/L) for a 2L 4pot car
conclusion, FC is heavily fluctuated based on stop/go traffic and WOT/brake in city driving. no gadget can help. hehehe
jooggie;471443 said:
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