Installed MSD DIS-2

[georryan]

Well I finally found an MSD DIS - 2 unit and got it installed. The car runs, so it must all be wired correctly. =)

I ended up going to the junkyard and sniping out some wiring and connectors to make a patch harness so I could fit it into my car and easily remove it if I ever needed to.

You can see my harness hooking into the car's harness and coil in this picture:


I mounted the MSD unit between the firewall and the strut tower on the driver's side. It just barely fits in there. Its secured with some self taping screws with some rubber grommets to negate any vibration. There is also a little rubber under the unit to add some cushion below and between the hard lines that are under the unit.



I wired the posative line to the battery and then the negative line I grounded on a bolt behind the washer fluid bottle between the firewall and the bracket for the fuse box.


So far I haven't noticed too much of a difference, but I haven't had much time with it, yet. I'm expecting the fuel economy to go up a little.

My reason for upgrading was to help with smog. I failed the idle test in CA surprisingly. I've never failed before, and it has never been close to failing. My guess is it had to do with me running colder plugs (7E-11s vs 6E-11s). Also, I haven't had to smog it yet since putting in the rob-tuned ECU, so that is also an unknown deal. So between the plugs, ecu, injectors, etc, there was a lot of factors that could have caused the change. My figuring: changing the plugs back to the normal heat range and beefing up the ignition should help the idle emissions drop quite a bit. Here's hoping.

I'll have an update tomorrow as I go to smog it.

-Ryan

[Legacy777]

Ryan,

Hopefully you'll like the DIS-2 ignition. I've been happy with mine and have had it since around 2002.

I like the plug & play harness you made, that's nice. One comment on the ground; You may want to make sure the ground you used is a "good" ground. You can check the resistance between the ground point you used and the negative terminal of the battery. It should be 0 ohms. If it's not I would recommend finding a better ground point, either an existing ground point you can tie into or one that makes good connection to the chassis.

[georryan]

Yeah good idea Josh. I'll check that later today. I went to re-smog it again today and failed miserably.

Last time I was barely off on the idle, this time I was WAY off on both idle and 2500 rpm. I only changed a pcv hose, plugs and ignition. I'm tempted to just retake the free test with the stock ignition plugged in and see if it passes. I'll test the ground, though, first before I do that.

The other unknown is I've never tried to smog my car with the rob tune ecu installed. I came close to passing last time so I think I should be able to do it, but we'll see. I'd hate to have to swap out injectors and ecu every two years.

[Legacy777]

Ryan,

What plugs are you using and what are you failing on?

[georryan]

I had the BRK7E11 plugs when I failed the first time and only failed on the idle. Last time it was smogged was before putting in the Rob Tune ecu, and I passed with flying colors.

This second time I put in BRK6E11 plugs and the MSD ignition and seemed to be running rich by the results. I hit the gross polluter mark. Failed on both counts idle and 2500 rpm for both hydrocarbons and CO%.

Between the first and second test the PPM count for idle tripled.

I'm wondering if the ground is bad on that ignition like you suggested.

Oh, they also flagged me for having a manual boost controller which is a first. Which they guy there said would also cause me to fail just on inspection alone. This place is a little too thorough for my taste. =)

[georryan]

So as an update:

So let's call the first place A. I went there for a third smog check (free because of some things they missed, like the boost controller). This time I disconnected the MSD ignition. This time they said that I still failed and still qualified as a gross polluter. So after thinking about it for a while I decided to put in the BKR7E-11 plugs back in the car and see if it would pass with the MSD ignition. s

I put in the old plugs and re-gapped them at .04. I then also changed the ground for the ignition just in case.

I took it to another place up near my work that would do a pretest and let me know if it would fail. Since I was asking it they must have been looking for any reason to fail my car and came back complaining about the ignition and the intercooler. It was my understanding that the intercooler was exempt, and the ignition had a CARB number for CA, but I didn't have the sticker under my hood.

So, I then left place B and went to a third place that I've been to before and I know a subaru mechanic takes his cars to. Place C said my car passed with flying colors, but they failed me on inspection based on the ignition and the aftermarket turbo. I told him it was a subaru turbo and that ignition had a CARB number. He said to get the sticker and bring it back. They loved my car though and he said he loves how good of condition it was in even though it was close to 300k miles. He said it drove and felt like new. They also told me that CA was going to get much stricter in the coming years. Anything that wasn't stock was going to need stickers under the hood. It wasn't going to be good enough to get paperwork from the company.

So I decided to chance it and take it back to Place A, since they seemed to be ok with the ignition, intercooler, and turbo. I showed up and the guys recognized me right away. I told them I had it pretested and the plugs were changed and was told it should pass. They tested it and passed it. They told me it looked like the 02 sensor had been changed, too.

The actual emission numbers were DRASTICALLY different and very very very clean: way below average on everything but the idle hydrocarbon test.

Good news is I'm ok for another 2 years now. CA smog laws and pickiness is getting very annoying.

[rallyak]

I'm so glad they eliminated the smog program here. I'm running a header,delta cams and no cats.

[Legacy777]

I was going to tell you to change the plugs back to the regular plugs.

I have read and hear people saying they "upgraded" their turbo or did something and decided to go with colder plugs. It is a HUGE misnomer! The colder plug theory dates back to the muscle car days where guys would up the compression ratio. This would not allow the spark plug to cool enough and would cause the electrode to degrade and/or could cause detonation or pre-ignition due to the plug being too hot. So the solution was the go with a colder plug.

Unless you are running a crazy turbo in super boost all the time (ie. actual racing) you don't want to run colder plugs because during regular driving/operation the plugs won't get hot enough for proper combustion. Fuel mileage, emissions, and power will suffer. The reason colder plugs worked back in the muscle car days was because they engine had higher compression all the time, not sometimes like turbo engines.

Glad to hear you got everything running well.

[georryan]

Josh - that was exactly my thought as well. The other thing I read is that when you advance the timing you can actually cause your cylinder temperatures to increase, and going with a colder plug offsets it. My oil level was also a bit low for the first couple tests, so for my final test, I had topped off the oil, put the MSD ignition back in, went with the step colder plug (re-gapped) - and that seemed to work. I also had run for about 20 minutes on the freeway in fourth gear to really heat up the cats. That may have been a larger factor than anything else. Still the difference was quite dramatic. Running the BKR6E11 plugs no matter with or without the MSD caused me to fail. Granted, I'm running the Rob Tune Ecu and I don't know how that effects things or how it is tuned in terms of CA emissions.

[Legacy777]

Wait, maybe I missed something....are you running the colder plugs or regular plugs? The regular plugs should be the BKR6's, while the BKR7's are the colder

http://www.ngksparkplugs.com/tech_suppo ... ugs/p2.asp

[georryan]

I am running the colder plugs. I know it doesn't make sense. But running the stock plugs made my values worse.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Legacy777]

That makes no sense at all.

Do you have exact emissions numbers you could share for the time(s) you didn't pass and the time you passed?

[georryan]

Sure Josh,

Here are the max and average numbers that they are looking for:

idle - Max HC - 120 Ave HC - 29
2500 rpm - Max HC - 140 Ave HC - 20

idle - Max CO 1.00 Ave CO - 0.10
2500 rpm - Max CO 1.00 Ave CO - 0.10


First Test (BKR7E11 - gapped at .034 I believe, and stock ignition)
idle - HC 172 CO - 0.44
2500 rpm - HC 78 CO - 0.88

Second Text (BKR6E11 - gapped at 0.038 I believe, MSD ignition)
idle - HC 580 CO - 6.60
2500 rpm - HC 236 CO - 7.81

Third Test (BKR6E11 - Same gap as above, stock ignition)
idle - HC 597 CO - 5.47
2500 rpm - HC 164 CO - 5.70

Fourth and Fifth test were so similar, but the Fifth test was the same place as the first three, so I'll just include that one for reference. (BKR7E11 gapped at .040, MSD Ignition, I'd run the car on the freeway for 40 min at 3500-4000rpms, and had some emissions cleaner in the tank)

idle HC 52 CO - .01
2500 rpm HC 10 CO - .15


All the other tests I had also run the car around hoping to warm up the cats, but not for as long of a time. Its also possible that maybe the car had been running rich and not burning off all the fuel originally and had built up deposits in the cylinders that didn't get cleaned off until later?

I was reading something while sitting and waiting that was talking about how advancing timing can increase cylinder temperatures, and that going with a colder plug can lower cylinder temperatures. I know that Rob can sometimes has played with some aggressive tunes by what I thought was advancing timing or something like that. So my thought was if cylinder temps affect smog then maybe I needed a colder plug with his tune on the ecu. In any regard, the colder plug originally was closer to passing smog than the stock plugs had been, so I decided to try it with the MSD and it passed, but it wasn't the only variable I changed, so it is hard to know for sure.

I haven't actually researched the cylinder temperature thing, at least not enough to know if it actually affects anything.

[Legacy777]

Ryan,

Thanks for the numbers. I'll be quite honest with you....they don't make any sense. I would conclude that the "test" procedure i.e. "warming up the cats", or something else was different between tests.

There are three primary pollutants from an internal combustion engine, NOx, CO, & HC.

NOx emissions are a byproduct of sustained high combustion temperatures. If you have a working catalytic converter (or even if you don't) NOx emissions should barely register anything or be zero at idle and high idle (2,500 rpm) with no load on the engine.

CO & HC emissions are typically a byproduct of incomplete combustion, also known as emissions from "low heat". Misfires, weak ignition, poor fuel mixing and things like that can cause higher CO emissions. CO & HC emissions will typically follow one another.

If you are high on both NOx & CO/HC, you've got a problem somewhere with the engine, and/or the cat is not working.

This diagram shows what I mean. (click for larger image)



As I mentioned, it's possible the testing scenarios varied, which caused the different test results. High timing advance can raise in-cylinder temps & pressures, but as I mentioned above that would raise NOx and should decrease CO/HC. If it doesn't....there's something wrong.

Anyway, glad to hear it passed. I would be curious to see how your fuel mileage compares with the 7's vs. the 6's.

[lucas]

im from 909 part of california and my car failed when i still lived there and only changed the o2 sensor then passed. Sounds like you were slightly bamboozzled

[CFK]

Ya I failed "AirCare" in British Columbia ( modelled after CA Smog ) cause my Cat was a small aftermarket unit. That was with the TD04, Stock ECU & injectors. They don't care about aftermarket stuff here, as long as it has a Cat. OBD 1 is on the rollers, OBD II is strictly read with a diagnostic tool.

Before I figured out the cat was to small, my motor blew 4 days later, then I went RobTune, TD05, 440's & Delta Torque Cams. Threw some Methylhydrate in there and attempted again, FAILED, which I pretty much expected. Don't think a factory cat would have mattered with the cams anyway, and cams are such a pain with these motors.

With my SOHC VW motor I could swap the cam , get it smogged , return home and swap it back so easy ! That is the downside to the Boxer for sure, heads up against the frame rails , such a PITA

Oh well, found a insurance loop hole, just had to switch from pleasure to business , became an artisan and now pay the highest rates but if anything happened they might try and void my insurance

Ditched the cat and hope for the best , there supposed to abolish the smog in 2015 , but who knows they keep changing there minds

[Legacy777]

I found a shop that helped mine pass last year. The delta cams cause issues with the testing machine. My car will be 25 years old this year and will be exempt from emissions testing.