Almost no spark, Nissan SR20 initial set-up.

[BenFenner]

How about this... I could drill out the hole in the center of the CAS disc so I can spin the disc instead of the distributor to get more advance in the timing. I feel like I shouldn't have to do this though.

[BenFenner]

It's almost 11:00 pm. here, so I went out to check spark in the dark since it'll be a lot easier to see.

When I put the distributor back into the mix, I ended up getting plug 4 to fire, and only plug 4. It seemed to be firing at the same speed that plug 1 was firing when I had it hooked directly to the coil. I just wanted you to know as much as possible. I'm really still feeling like I'm getting at least 1/4th the spark per unit of time that I should be.

Here's that video of the speed of firing during cranking I promised earlier:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7iD3EekOxQ

[rob@vems.co.uk]

It seems that the engine is firing every other trigger...  Which is strange but not out of the bounds of possabilities.

Set your cranking timing back to 10deg BTDC.

Go to Settings->Primary Trigger Settings

Set your Trigger Tooth to 0, and crank the engine. Increasing the trigger tooth will bring the trigger point back to the tooth straight after the sync trigger.  When you get to the trigger tooth that gives you the closest timing to 10deg use the TDC after the trigger value to trim the base timing.

Just for a quick experiment, in your Ignition settings try setting Ignition outputs us use in h[2] to 01..00 and then in Ignition outputs set 1 to 0 (EC36 Pin 35)

[BenFenner]

I thought I was aiming for 0 degrees BTDC. I'll give your 10 degrees a try though. Thanks for the ideas, I'll give them a try in a couple hours after work.

[BenFenner]

Changing the Trigger Tooth to 1 ended up placing the timing marks right where I wanted them.

I was then able to time the engine with great difficulty, as the timing would change a lot after restarting VEMS, and took many tries before it stayed consistent. Now that I re-read your advice, I realize I've done that part backwards maybe. Anyway, I got a decent, reproducible 7 degrees BTDC dialed in (best I could get with my bass-ackwards method).

I then tried what you said about doubling the ignition output. That gave me two quick sparks, a pause, then two quick sparks. It seemed to be working, so I put the distributor back in the mix. I would get sparks for plugs 2 and 4 only. I then upped the ignition outputs to 4, which gave sparks on all 4 plugs in the correct firing order.

I put the plugs back in the car, set the fuel injectors settings, put the fuel pump fuse in, pulled the WB02 out of the exhaust and gave her a crank.

Success!

She started, and idled. I've spent about 2 hours fiddling around with things trying to get stuff to work, like the radiator fans, and the idle control valve.

Mainly I'm having issues with the idle control valve, but I'll take that topic back to my project page.

Either way, the car runs, and responds to what little tuning I've tried. This is a huge step, and I'm pretty happy I've managed to get this far. Apparently VEMS and I don't mix when it comes to ignition. Rob, do you have any idea why I have to have it set up the way I do? There's got to be something wrong, right?

[rob@vems.co.uk]

I think its going to be the subtle mix of the distributor position effecting the position of the cap in relation to the distributor arm and the fact that it moves the sensor in relation to the distributor at the same time...

Idle control is a huge pain, start with it in the On/Off setting so that the thing stays on until say 65degC and the switch it off.