I’m trying to get my MyChron5 to work with my track car, but I cannot get it to read spark. I’ve tried looping it around the signal wire, power wire, ground wire, and even the base of the coil. Nada. I even used the wire straight off the kart to make sure it wasn’t a wire gauge issue or anything like that, and it still did not work. Is there some secret I’m missing? If I splice into the signal wire directly, would it read that pulse?
Worst case, is there a way to keep the mychron alive for ~30 minutes without needing a tach signal?
Pictures work best so we can see if something is off. Take a picture of the back of the mychron and how you have it wrapped.
I personally like to add a bit of electrical tape once I wrap the wire around the spark plug wire. Makes sure the coils are tight and getting a good signal.
This is specifically for coil-on-plug applications. It works fine on my 206 where there’s a HT lead between the coil and engine, but now I’m trying on an engine that has the coil directly on the plug. Google says it can be done, but I’m having no luck getting it off the signal to the coil
I think you’ll have to connect straight to the signal wire coming off one of your coil packs. Then route that wire to the inductive loop on the back of the mychron. There probably isn’t enough voltage induced by just wrapping that wire, but connecting directly should do the trick.
Sorry I breezed right on past that. I think Ricky is right above. There isn’t enough flux created by the signal wire to induce a current in the rpm pickup wire.
Right, but if I just Tee off the signal wire, the open circuit to the Mychron won’t have any current either. Right? It’s pretty much my only option left, I’m just reluctant to cut into the harness and won’t have time to make a pigtail before this weekend.
It’s been hit and miss with COP for me. Mostly miss. Try as short of a wire, wrapped as many times as you can. If you can somehow squeeze the wire down to meet the HT side you’ll have better luck.
Since the are triggered by grounding, tapping the harness may not work.
The car is midengined, so the wire is way longer than I hoped once it runs in front of me so I can see it. I did try a shorter wire (the one from my kart), and that didn’t solve anything though.
Splicing into the signal wire didn’t do anything. I didn’t figure it would since there’s just no current.
I also looped it several times around one leg of the injector wiring, but no dice.
Why can’t these stupid things have an option to just stay on until you turn it off…
I cannot find anymore the AIM document, but if you don’t need RPM and just speed/timing, there should be a way (debug or something like that) which you can activate and it starts logging once speed goes over 2-3km/h
EDIT: found a YT video, looks like speed is 20km/h
Yeah, I did try that once but I may try again. The issue here is the coil sits flush to the valve cover, and the water seal is molded in, so I could peel it back. I may try looping around closer to the spark plug where it gets narrower, so I might get a stronger pulse, but this will also open the water seal where the wire passes through.
I’m going to try again wrapping the wire around the coil, but, until then, I was able to get into this debug mode and turn auto off off. At the very least, I’ll have timing data which is the main thing. RPM would be great, but that’s secondary.
Can anyone explain how the mychron uses the tachometer? It is literally mind blowing to me. I know it picks up electric currents from the spark plug wire, but how does literally just feeding it through a hole in the mychron allow the mychron to read anything from that? Am I missing something?
Faraday’s Law says that a change in magnetism produces a voltage. When you wrap the wire around the spark plug wire, it produces a voltage spike in the wire. Back at the Mychron, this spike is detected by using the inverse of the principle. Its similar to how the magnetos work on these engines - passing a magnetic by produces a current spike. Those are just much, much stronger.
If this is on a Car, then why not use a Solo2 that has CAN interface and take the RPM directly from the Controller? AIM has a whole suite dedicated to automobiles. My Dad uses one in his race car and can take the performance data recorded by the Solo2 to tune his ECM to specific tracks if needed.
You are right, my Dad does have the DL. I guess the real question was why not have a dedicated Logger for each application. I am guessing the cost is prohibited.
Given you are worried about compromising the rubber seal on the coil, you could try using a very thin diameter/insulated wire wrapped around the part of the coil that connects just above the spark plug to exit the seal and transition to the normal trigger wire back to the mychron. If you go under the seal, you could also use a dab of silicone to close the gap.
What year and model vehicle are you trying to adapt this to?
I’m not worried about the seal - it seems like one molded part and I just can’t physically separate it. I did try wrapping below the seal knowing it would leak, and it didn’t work.
As for why mychron5 - it is simply because I have one. This is for HPDE, and I just need rpm and gps. Heck, GPS alone is fine, so, if the free option checks my immediate boxes, it’s perfect. If I were to get a dedicated system, I’d probably go with a Garmin Catalyst. Right now I’m running without a timer because I’m just intermediate and it’s pretty obvious when and what I do something right or wrong.
