Direct Ignition in the 'Skunk Works'

[LaurenAlexS]

As some of you may know, I've been working with Phrenology in getting a '88 G3 A20A3 stuffed into his '84 G2 hatchback ... but I digress.

I am currently developing an affordable, distributorless, four-coil, high-energy direct-ignition system for the G3 Accord and Prelude A20AX engine. It should be available the first of next year. I will post details of the product once we have the beta testing completed.

We are also working with an OEM and we have become an authorized distributor for their innovative ignition product, which has been proven to improve fuel economy and torque. We will offer this product as an upgrade option to our G3 direct-ignition system, which will further improve the effectiveness of your ignition system, thus allowing much leaner mixtures for the same power output.

I am looking for 3Gee'rs in the St. Petersburg, FL and Carson City, NV that would be interested in letting their Accords (if in good condition) become a test bed for our beta product testing. You would receive one, installed beta version of the direct ignition system free of charge. We will provide free dyno data of your vehicle, in various configurations to document the improvement that this equipment will provide. We only ask that you provide your confidential opinion of the product(s) and note any changes in fuel economy or performance. No public endorsement is required.

Once we have the test data and the product packaged for sale, I'm sure Phrenology will post it up on www.appentec.com.

[FyreDaug]

I would test it, but im up in canada. How would it work on a 3g with carb'd? What controls the timing of the spark? How can it be adjusted?

Just interested, is all

[LaurenAlexS]

I'm sorry but we are looking for people with vehicles located near the Tampa Bay and Reno, NV area -- near our offices. We need to install the unit and dyno the car and work directly with the owner to fine tune the product. You're welcome to purchase the kit when it becomes available early next year.

The G3 direct-ignition product will work on carbureted or EFI engines. A tachometer output is provided. No electrical system changes will be required, short of the connections to the new ignition system and the removal of the old pickup in the distributor, which is replaced by ours. The four coils mount on the valve cover. The ignitor box can mount in a few different places.

The old distributor stays in place but the plug wires are removed. The distributor caps acts as dust cover for the new pickups.

The timing is not adjustable on the initial product offering. The ignition timing will continue to be based up your existing vacuum and mechanical advance curves. However, the spark energy will greatly increase.

[AccordEpicenter]

Any ideas as to how much this system will cost etc?

[LaurenAlexS]

We're shooting for around the $200-250 range for the basic kit consisting of: four high-energy ignition coils, the ignition controller, the new pickup assembly, mounting hardware and instructions. Prices may vary, but that's our target. We'll publish a retail price sheet in January.

The 'spark enhancement' option will be an upgrade, which will further increase the spark energy, producing an even more aggressive flame front. We're trademarking the product 'PowerPlug'. There will be an added cost for this additional hardware upgrade. We are now a licensed distributor for this patented product which replaces the spark plug assembly. A gain of 6-10 HP was measured on a dyno by the OEM on a B16 engine using this product alone, as well as a 10-15% improvement in fuel economy. We are still negotiating the volume pricing for this product.

The two products together will produce a noticeable increase in power, torque and fuel economy. Additionally, you won't need to be changing the rotor and cap as part of your tune-up. The spark plugs will last much longer as well, as the higher energy spark tends to keep them cleaner.

A lot depends on the volume discounts that we can get in production and what the volume demand will be. The pricing will certainly be aggressively positioned below the price of MSD and other 'name-brand' multi-coil kits.

The kit will be specifically tailored for the A20 engines, so no guesswork or modifications will be required, unlike the other 'universal' multi-coil kits.

We will expand the multi-coil ignition product line to directly support additional 80s-90s Honda (D,F,H), Toyota (4AG) and other performance engines equipped with single coils and distributors as the demand increases and our engineering resources allow.

Lauren Alex Scott
V/P Sales and Marketing

[Accordtheory]

coil per plug ignition on a car that doesn't even have computer controlled timing..for some reason I find that rather amusing..

[newaccorddriver]

coil per plug ignition on a car that doesn't even have computer controlled timing..for some reason I find that rather amusing..

if it works like its supposed to work, then id buy one to try it out. would be nice if we can actually reprogram the timing to our own taste though, i know the turbo A20 guys would like it atleast

[Accordtheory]

Turbo guys would like obd-1 before they do anything with that...

[NXRacer]

question

is this operated by a stand alone ECU or is it just taking signals from the dist. rotor and sending it to the coil packs?

question #2
if you're essentially taking apart distributors, could you do that with other distruberter internals? for example i want an OBD1 ECU controllable dizzy guts in my OEM housing for the A20ax

[LaurenAlexS]

Is this operated by a stand alone ECU or is it just taking signals from the dist. rotor and sending it to the coil packs?

The Honda OEM pickup plate/single pickup coil is removed and replaced with ours. The new plate has two pickups, as opposed to just one. It fits in the exact same position as the old plate. The four flag reluctor ring is replaced with our single-flag trigger.

Each one of the new four ignition coils is fired on the power and exhaust stroke, like a 'waste-fire' system, but each cylinder has an individual coil, so there is no spark power lost in the 'waste-fired' plug for the plug in the compression/power stroke. All cylinders get 100% power on every power stroke.

This compromise allows us to get the position signal we need from two-coil pickup and just two wires, which makes installation easier. It also allows the assembly to move more freely with just two wires, as opposed to four.

if you're essentially taking apart distributors, could you do that with other distruberter internals? for example i want an OBD1 ECU controllable dizzy guts in my OEM housing for the A20ax

There's a lot of potential variability in the distributor guts, reluctors and trigger/timing rings. Anything is possible with time, effort and money. This approach is not our intent though.

We are not providing this product in an effort to support swapped engines and spliced harnesses and chipped ECUs at this time. There are just too many possible combinations to support.

We're primarily focusing on those 3Geez owners who have relatively stock carb'd or EFI setups who want a hotter, more reliable spark, which will result in better fuel economy and improved performance.

Later variations of this product may support programmable advance curves, retard controls for nitrous and turbo applications. Patience please.

Note that a rotary switch programmable rev limiter will be included in the initial product offering.

The reason that a microprocessor was not included in the initial product is that a discrete logic design is inherently more reliable than a microprocessor system -- that's not to say a reliable microprocessor system cannot be produced. The installation and setup of a plug-and play (no adjustment required) system is easier for the average weekend tinkerer who owns a daily driver.

[Kabuki]

I'm very interested in this product... Though none of my vehicles currently have an A20 engine. My 3G Prelude S, though is the B20A3, essentially the same engine as the A20, just dual carbed, with a little longer stroke and smaller bore. I'd love to install this setup and see how well it works.

[LaurenAlexS]

I'm very interested in this product... Though none of my vehicles currently have an A20 engine. My 3G Prelude S, though is the B20A3, essentially the same engine as the A20, just dual carbed, with a little longer stroke and smaller bore. I'd love to install this setup and see how well it works.

We will expand the multi-coil ignition product line to directly support additional 80s-90s Honda (B,D,F,H), Toyota (4AG) and other performance engines equipped with single coils and distributors as the demand increases and our engineering resources allow.

[Justin86]

ok well this will be good for the average enthusiasts that has very simple mods and wants a more efficent motor. So it sounds like this is just to replace the stock iginition system and will still use the stock ECU program, correct?

so it looks like us guys wanting some serious power are still looking at OBD-1 systems.

[smufguy]

i would defenitely have to see how this is actually gonna be controlled as Caleb inquired. There are ignition modules that u can buy and bolt on to our stock distributors and be detonation free upto 500hp easy. The ultimate question is .......... how is your's gonna be different than ur competitors and how is its reliablity? i understand its under testing, but im just curious. anyway, are u gonna be using stock rotor and cap? I would like to know how their accuracy is at higher rpm. but u mentioned that ur gonna be changing the timing gears, so probably it will be acurate because of that. But either way, keep us posted. Thanks for your interest

[A20A1]

"Waste spark"

Cool

You'll still need plug wires, but they'll be shorter. Unless you plan to mount the coil packs in a more remote location away from the exhaust manifold.

I would agree with the crank trigger.

good info on waste spark
ARTICLE 1
ARTICLE 2
EDUCATION

I wonder why honda didn't stick in an extra plug, if we were only going to have three valves, plenty of room for TWIN SPARK

I was reading about intake backfire problems with some waste spark setups.

[Kabuki]

i would defenitely have to see how this is actually gonna be controlled as Caleb inquired. There are ignition modules that u can buy and bolt on to our stock distributors and be detonation free upto 500hp easy. The ultimate question is .......... how is your's gonna be different than ur competitors and how is its reliablity? i understand its under testing, but im just curious. anyway, are u gonna be using stock rotor and cap? I would like to know how their accuracy is at higher rpm. but u mentioned that ur gonna be changing the timing gears, so probably it will be acurate because of that. But either way, keep us posted. Thanks for your interest

Yes, the stock cap will be there, but the point here is that there are individual coils for each plug, thus no spark plug wires or rotor. He said they would use the stock cap as a convenient cover for the position sensors that would still need to be used.

[LaurenAlexS]

You'll still need plug wires, but they'll be shorter. Unless you plan to mount the coil packs in a more remote location away from the exhaust manifold.

Correct. This is more of a 'coil very near plug' system as opposed to a 'coil on plug' system.

An anodized heat shield is provided to allow the coils to be mounted on the valve cover, above the exhaust manifold. The length of the ignition wire on each coil is about 4-5 inches.

The initial benefits of this are 1) not losing the energy in the spark 'jump' loss in the rotor/distributor cap and 2) the 'rise time' of the spark in the plug is limited by the length of the resistive ignition wire. The shorter the wire, the faster the voltage rise and the higher peak voltage at the plug.

The primary winding of these ignition coils are also much lower (around 0.5 ohm) than the stock coil, which allows the secondary winding impedance to be reduced as well, which allows further increases in rise-time of the output voltage and allows us to dump the energy stored in the ignition coil core into the spark plug faster. This allows us to have multiple strikes per ignition cycle up to about 3,500 RPM.

[Accordtheory]

You can do all of that with a halfway decent ignition box coil, and plug wires. Shit, if you want power, you can easily get a sytem that is powerful enough to cut your spark plug life into a third of what it is.
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to make enemies, but I have to call it like I see it. Coil per plug should not be waste spark, controlled by a pathetic, inaccurate vaccum/centrifugal distributor. It should be sequential like the injectors, controlled by a computer, and Crankshaft triggered. Let's see how far this goes, my best guess is nowhere.

[LaurenAlexS]

You can do all of that with a halfway decent ignition box coil, and plug wires. Shit, if you want power, you can easily get a sytem that is powerful enough to cut your spark plug life into a third of what it is.
I'm sorry, I'm not trying to make enemies, but I have to call it like I see it. Coil per plug should not be waste spark, controlled by a pathetic, inaccurate vaccum/centrifugal distributor. It should be sequential like the injectors, controlled by a computer, and Crankshaft triggered. Let's see how far this goes, my best guess is nowhere.

Thank you for your input. We value our customer opinions.

We can offer the kit with a crankshaft trigger as well (as an option), for those who wish to spend the extra effort to install it. The ignition drive electronics would be identical.

In regards to 'waste-fire' -- Our system is not a 'waste-fire' system in the typical sense, as used commonly on Fords, GMs and just about everything else on the planet. We provide one ignition coil per plug, but the sequence in which they are fired is similar to a 'waste-fire' system. This compromise allows the triggering system and control electronics to be simpler and less costly. As mentioned earlier, each coil provides full-voltage, without having to provide a spark for the 'waste-fire' plug.

[LaurenAlexS]

I was reading about intake backfire problems with some waste spark setups.

Yes, it's quite possible that in some dual cam setup, where a 'tuner' has completely screwed the valve timing, that intake backfire on a 'waste-fire' system is a routine problem. Of course, if you advance the spark too far at low RPM you can cause intake backfire in any car. There are several possibilities that can cause intake backfire.
However, the reality is that there have been literally millions of miles driven on thousands of vehicle from dozens of manufacturers that use the classic two-coil 'waste-fire' design on a four cylinder engine and they aren't back firing. I think that this is a non-issue for the vast majority of 3Geez owners.

I was reading about intake backfire problems with some waste spark setups.

It's also possible that in some (a few, a small percentage) of the multi-strike, 'waste-fire' systems, that the multiple spark duration runs too long (3-10 sparks at low RPM) and into the intake cycle on the 'waste-fire' cylinder, thus causing intake backfire.
We're testing and tuning for the A20AX engine and we've not seen that problem with our controller.

[smufguy]

most probably cause our stock cams have minimal overlap negating the backfire. besides, the waste spark is nothing performance oriented....... its just a cleaning mechanism to burn up the already burnt (improperly burnt) gases.

[LaurenAlexS]

most probably cause our stock cams have minimal overlap negating the backfire. besides, the waste spark is nothing performance oriented....... its just a cleaning mechanism to burn up the already burnt (improperly burnt) gases.

You have to wonder if the manufacturers created the idea that the 'waste-spark' actually burned any unburned gases in the exhaust stroke -- to justify a cheaper, simpler ignition system that really sucks -- as opposed to spending the money for a one coil per cylinder (direct ignition) system.

The classic 'waste-fire' system saves two ignition coils but the system requires a much higher voltage spark (since it has to jump two gaps), thus increasing the secondary coil impedance (reducing rise time) and risks voltage breakdown of the coil (at the higher voltages of 40kV). Plus if one plug fouls, the other fires poorly too.

Our systems takes advantage of the simple trigger requirements of the 'waste-fire' system, but uses one-coil per cylinder, thus eliminating most of the problems with the classic 'waste-fire' design.

Yes, our system will 'burn' any unburned gases that might still be around in the exhaust stroke (at least as well as any OEM system does).

[smufguy]

being that we run on capacitive discharge ignition coil......... what kinda system does a coil pack use? so basically my understanding is that you have a trigger at the cam end (distributor) then you got individual coils on each plugs to fire each cylinder and a controller to initiate the spark cycle right?

[Cant Stop]

hmmm is orlando close enough?
after this friday i am on a 2 week plant shutdown, st. pete is only 2 hours away, currently i am running a 1989 accord lx with complete black box removal on a carbed unit,installing a manual choke this weekend
165,000 miles burns no oil has a minor exhaust leak. runs great a/c works idles at 1200 rpm/park bout 850/in gear. plenty of space where the black box was to mount the unit for testing purposes.

[Kabuki]

being that we run on capacitive discharge ignition coil......... what kinda system does a coil pack use? so basically my understanding is that you have a trigger at the cam end (distributor) then you got individual coils on each plugs to fire each cylinder and a controller to initiate the spark cycle right?

Sorry, no... We use an inductive discharge coil, not capacitive. The ONLY stock Honda product that uses CDI is the CBR1000 bike. All of the OE Honda coil packs on cars/trucks are inductive discharge as well.