I just received the latest Central States Newsletter, a quarterly
canard
publication.
Steve Wright complains of multiple failures of different electronic
ignition units in 500 hours of flying. Rose ElectroAir, P-Mag, Light
Speed, and even a Unison Mag.
Quote "the bottom line is, all the EIs are less than perfect and do
fail. It's good that we have 2 of them."
I've been flying 700 hours and never one failure of my single
trusty old
Mazda 2nd gen RX-7 box, that does EI and fuel injection.
Perry
I can report that my Jeff rose failed on my O-320 after about 700
hrs. I
returned it to him, he tested it in an oven and with vibrations and
could
find nothing wrong. I reinstalled it on the right mag loc and again it
would start missing at about 200' altitude during takeoff, despite
no ground
run up problems (obviously!). I bolted the right mag back on, no
problems.
I've left the mag on ever since. that Jeff rose flew me to AK, the
Bahamas
and to the east coast many times, with good gas savings. Jeff
recommended
to never run both mags with the EI. (and yes, I did try new wires
and plugs
etc....) kevin (burning avgas at 25 degrees advance :-(
Hi guys ;
I have had some experience wth the Mazda ignition modules. I had an
82 RX-7
that blew the two modules simultaneously which I traced to a rebuilt
alternator that had been arcing one of the windings.
I went to the local Maza dealer and they wanted about $450.00 so I told
them to forget it. I went to a local auto parts store and they were much
less only about $250. They apologized for being so expensive but I
told them
how cheap compared to Mazda. I had ben fooling around with electronic
ignitions and I had a couple GM ignition modules so I decided to try
them. I
gutted the Mazda modules and ran wires straight through them out to
the GM
modules that I had mounted on an aluminum plate. I then ran the wires
from
the modules to the coils and WOW worked like a champ. Ran better than it
ever had. And those Modules were only $15.00ea. I showed the local Mazda
repair place how to do it and they were very pleased. I had two cars
that
used those modules and never had any problem with them. They seem to
be very
tough.
Bob Archer
Car or airplane Bob?
Airplanes run at 6000 RPM cont. which is harder on ignition modules.
Also each rotor fires twice as often as a one cylinder piston engine.
Paul Lamar
Hi again.
I am running one of the GM HEI distributors in my not very stock Chevy
350
truck and I pretty regularly punch it up to 6K or so with out missing a
beat. It does have an after market module and coil though. The two rotor
Mazda would have only 2/3 as many fireing impulses. I do think you should
keep it cool though. If I had it to do over I would certainly use those
rather than the TRW ones I have. One of those is bad and leaking the
inside
packing stuff.
Bob Archer
82 RX-7 predates the 86+ 2nd gen EI-EFI.
They were carbureted for fuel delivery, I'm not that familiar with the
first gen ignition system but I think it had a conventional distributor.
Perry
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