6G Celicas Forums

Car = Gen3 3sgte + aftermarket ECU + individual coils/distributorless setup (only using distributor for timing)

I have a question..but to get you on the same page I'll explain some things first. Today I was going over all of the final things after the rewire and making sure I've covered everything in this engine build, and it hits me that my distributor is set at the normal advance for a distributor setup, not distributorless. I don't want to use the normal mechanical advance setup because I will be running the Autronic ecu on the car and I will advance the timing in the Autronic electronically. So..I want to set the distributor at 0 degrees. If my dist is set to 10 degrees, then my settings in the ECU will start at about 2ish degrees, but I would rather set my dist to 0 so that I can start the advance at 10 or 12 or whatever the timing will come out to on the dyno on this car. For the 2nd gen 3sgte I believe the dist is allowed to move between 5°ATDC to about 20°BTDC, and I'm pretty sure that I'm using either a gen2 3s dist or a 5s one. I believe most of the dists are the same for the S family, but someone please correct me if I'm wrong. If I have to leave it like this and tune it then I will, but I would rather know my dist is set at 0 degrees so that I will know exactly what my timing advance is on my car.

So my question..
How do I go about setting my dist at 0 degrees? If I had a timing light I could, BUT there is no coil or spark plug wires to provide the other means of testing with a timing light.

Hopefully I'll post another youtube video tomorrow on the recent progress over the last few months.

This post has been edited by match220: Dec 28, 2012 - 2:55 AM

well..no one answered me, which is fine. I'll just answer myself with what I have done just in case someone else is looking for an answer to the same question...

since I believe the distributor allows for movement between 5 degrees ATDC and 20 degrees BTDC (please correct me if you know the exact degrees) I turned it 4/5 of the allowed movement clockwise, which should get it close enough to 0 TDC.

I also found out on some other forums that there is a way to check it with a timing light by using a spark plug wire between the individual coil and spark plug on cylinder 1, which makes sense. I'll be making one out of an old spark plug wire soon.

I don't think you have to do anything to the actual distributor. In the Megasquirt stand alone that I have, you specify your base timing (10 degrees), and then use a timing light to see what it actually is at when the engine is running. Then you make adjustments in the ecu's software (i think its the angle adjustment?) until your timing light starts to match the 10 degrees your software is set for.

The factory ecu is not user programmable hence why you have to physically rotate the distributor, but in a programmable ecu you just change the setting in the software.

This post has been edited by lagos: Jan 3, 2013 - 12:59 AM

Yeah, technically I don't have to touch it at all. The way the Autronic is designed I can leave the distributor alone, plug in 4 individual coils to the cylinders, wire everything in, change the settings to allow for 4 ignition triggers, and specify the "ignition delay time" as 0 in the settings (considering I don't move the distributor), but if I move the distributor to 0 then I would change the "ignition delay time" to 10. I want the distributor set at 0, just because I want it like that. I actually don't have to move it at all, I can fully advance or fully retard it, and the settings that are changed are just electronic. I just like knowing what my timing is.

Here is how MS does it: http://www.megasquirtpnp.com/docs/mspnp_g2_ts9092.htm (scroll down the page).

Base timing is just a reference number to make sure whats set in the software is what is really going on. So remember that even if you set that number at 10 and your distributor at zero, thats not where your timing will be at idle. The actual timing will come from your timing map.

You need to set it like MS does it. Basically just tell the ecu to send out a fixed timing (either there is a setting for this, or you can set your ignition map to 10deg at all idle load cells) and then use a timing light to see what you are really getting on the crank pulley. The idea is just to get these two numbers to match using the delay time setting so that you will know that 15 degs in the software will really be 15 deg in the motor when you are making tuning adjustments later on.

I didn't notice, but what I posted above as the "ignition delay time" is measured in usec (microseconds), and that's just the time and that's the delay of the signal to the coils from the computer. I don't think there is a way to set my base ignition timing, I just lay it out in the ignition table starting with 10.

I know what you are saying. All I'm saying is that I want to set my distributor at 0, I know I don't need to, I want to.

Then just set 10 deg of timing on every load cell in your map, set that delay to zero, and use a timing light to manually adjust the distributor until it reads 10 deg with a timing light. Then your distributor will be at 0. The 10 deg you'll see with the timing light is just what is being added by the ecu to that initial value.

I don't think there is a way of setting it without the engine running or without a timing light.

yeah, that is the problem that I said in one of the first posts. It is a distributorless setup with the coils directly on the plug, so I have to be creative to use a timing light. The only thing I'm using the distributor for is the pickup inside it. I'm going to run a spark plug wire from coil 1 to the spark plug and put the timing light on that. Thanks for all of your input.