Goodbye CIS-III, the Haltech IG5 is in!

[Jim Green]

So here's how it went down, I came to a point where I
was just sick of trying work with what I have.  The
CIS-III ignition worked great with my MC motor.  When
I put in the MC-2 with higher compression, and a
shaved head, it was just to picky.  So I looked at all
the stuff out there, and for $415 from Force-EFI, the
Haltech IG-5 sounded like the way to go.  The only
thing that made me consilder something like a Linkplus
was that the Haltech will not direct fire a five
cylinder.  The lack of knock sensing is not a big deal
to me since my motor seems to set it off anyways above
4500 rpms.  The IG5 also has four outputs that you can
use for stuff like wastegate boost control,
intercooler fans, radiator fans, turbo timers, and
some other stuff.

Install:  The install was painless.  Javad gave me a
cheatsheet on what wires need to be altered to make
stuff like the O2 heater, fuel pump, and Autocheck
happy.  The harness I recieved was huge, and I thought
it would take me all day, but after sorting through
it, I found that only ~7 of the wires needed to be
hooked up.  The sensors, ignition signal, and power.
All the others were for alternate outputs.

Tuning:  The software takes some getting used to.  It
has a quickmap function that will get your car
running, then I just went for a little light footed
drive watching my knock light, and listening for
pinging.  The quickmap was way to advanced for me, so
I had a lot or backing off to do.  Once I saw the
knock light start to flash, I'd hit the 'home' button,
and that takes you to the range where you currently
are.  Then you just back things off from that boost
level on.  I had it running great in a couple of hours
at 15 psi.  Then I went to get gas and broke the
cardinal rule of using a different gas station.  The
damn thing started pinging all over the place, stupid
bad gas!  So I saved the good map that I had, and now
have the bad gas map and boost set at 11 psi.  UGH!  I
tried a bottle of octane booster, but no luck.  You
can get a trim knob tho hook to the ECU that can be
used to change base timing, or boost levels depending
on what it's set at in the software.  I'm going to
install one of these just for situations like this
when I don't have my laptop handy.

After having this for two days, I am very happy with
it, the car starts better, and runs better all
together.  I finally have some decent low-end power!
For the initial drives I didn't have my tach hooked
up, I'd just use the sound of the engine.  Once in a
while I'd look down to see what the rpm's were and
they were always a lot higher than what I expected.
Basicly it just runs smoother.  Also, I am running my
second set of injectors again with no problems.  I'll
blame the previouse problems on the ignition system.

=====
Jim Green
'89 90tq 034EFI, Haltech IG5
http://www.geocities.com/jeg1976/car_home.html

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