Decided to give the Austang a new ignition system for Christmas, the Petronix unit being a bit basic. Have been reading up on these ubeaut ICE systems, made in Australia.
They are a hybrid that uses a computer to vary the timing, dwell angle, length and intensity of the spark at different revs. Sounds like just the thing, so I contacts the dude in Melbourne and he sends up the boxes.
Pulling the stuff out, I find a distributor, leads, connectors, wire, the black box and a special booster which pokes the volts up, to ensure a steady voltage at the coil primary. This latter device is mainly for boats or drag cars without alternators etc. , which rely on the battery to maintain the volts at the primary. I figured that with all the sound gear, cdi lighting etc. I could justify spending the extra. Really, I just liked the idea of having the extra poke!
During conversations with Michael, the company owner I mentioned the wild cam and how I had dialed it back after the last blow up, to restore drive-ability. He told me that if we had installed the ICE system in the first place, I could have kept the wild cam as it adjusts the spark to give a better burn at idle and I am able to set initial timing higher to compensate the big overlap at idle.
Well I had heard promises from people before and took it all with a grain of salt.
I set to installing the black boxes and running the wiring. Decided to put the computer in the glovebox as suggested on their website, that way I can alter the timing curve quickly and easily. The biggest drama was finding the ignition only wire to send a good ignition switched 12V to the ICE computer box . . . last thing I wanted was an accessory feed going to the electronics. The only answer was to pull out the whole dashboard and trace the wire manually back to the switch. The wires were "grotty as" and the wiring diagram confusing in the manual. Just to be sure I had the right wire, I pulled out the switch and using a meter, determined exactly how the switch worked. There was the big thick wire heading off to the coil . . . splice into that, solder and tape up and Bob's your uncle right?
WRONG! put the dash back together, straining neck and back, swearing at the bloody speedo cable not wanting to go back in and the multi plug which you cannot get a proper grip on.
Popped in the new Dizzy, checking and triple checking the mesh of the cam gear and alignment of the rotor button.
Hit the starter and vroom! It started first go. But after a 30 second idle, piles of smoke poured out from the dash. stuck my head under and could see the insulation had melted off the wire from the splice back to the ignition switch. HUH? there are no shorts and quite frankly you would expect the insulation to be burnt off the whole wire, not just from the splice back to the switch, a distance of about an inch.
Out comes the dash . . . let's have another look at it. Luckily, I switched off before the hot wire did any further damage to other wires or the switch. WTF? I thought, this does not make any sense, it is like there is a big resistance in the wire from the switch to the splice. A big resistance, oh yeah, they used to make the wire to the coil a resistor wire to drop the volts to about 6 volts to avoid burning points didn't they? Another scan of the wiring diagram and I see the funny squiggle beside the wire number and realise it is the sign of a resistor. The ICE system was pulling so much current that it generated massive heat in the small area of the resistor, to which I had spliced. So a quick splice into the other wire going into that same point on the switch (which apparently the Racecraft guys had used for the Petronix system) and all was sorted.
Next challenge was massive preignition every time I drove and put revs on the car. Another WTF moment, I had checked the timing, all seemed to be correct. Took it to a mechanic and he discovered that the calibration on the pulley was not correct, another mark on the balancer had been dobbed with paint and that was the 0 degree point. Reset the timing and all is great.
Now, back to Michael's promises about the performance. He is right! The car used to take forever to start when cold, now fires almost instantly. When warmed up, the engine starts with key only. The idle has improved out of sight and it runs amazingly well. I wish I had the beasty cam back in there!
The ignition leads are all a bit short as I route them for show through fancy trays. But he is cool, just send them back with lengths for new ones and he will replace. Cannot ask for better service than that!
Installation paperwork and info on the curves is a bit sparse but I expect the real answers lie in putting the car on a dyno and setting it up under load in a controlled environment.
Apparently these things kick the MSD offerings out of the park, not a lot of info on the internet about them though and listening to the yanks talk, they like the MSD stuff because they made it. In fact one of the guys on a forum said that "made in Australia" means "Made in China". Ignorant jerk he is! They should take a look and what ignition system the top winning drag racers are using.
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