Hey, everyone

I'll try to make this as short as possible, but there is a lot that has gone on in the past couple of days between me and various people of 123ignition so I will try my best. 

I will post copies of a pdf file containing the emails between the various employees of this company. I am pointing out now that I have intermediate experience in mechanics and engine building but there is a lot for me to learn still. This isn't really much of discussion on the fundamentals of timing, installation, etc. This is more so a post regarding quality of a product and quality of customer service. I ultimately don't want people to make the same mistake I made. I understand this can be a difficult situation for both parties and I will get more into that later.

Okay, moving forward. I recently installed a 260z 123ignition programmable bluetooth distributor. With this unit I purchased the coil of their recommendation, along with plugs and spark plug wires. This was to be installed two weeks before my vacation so I could have time to fine tune it and get ready for a big drive ahead. I made a post a week or so ago that I was hearing noises under the hood which was confirmed to be the water pump. I documented healthy compression and no damage to rod bearings at that time. The 123ignition is a pretty straight forward install, though they do not state that you need a timing light for this to be installed properly. You do. I have one and used one but the instructions state you rotate the distributor according to the direction your rotor within the cap rotates and stop once a light illuminates within the distributor. There is a small window you'd get this correct without a timing light. Other customers had this problem.

After installation is complete the car starts up no problem once timing is set. At this point I started having trouble with the app and that it had trouble reading the stock curve information from the app from time to time. This is not much of a problem as information is stored internally within the distributor. I take the car for a drive. Mapped out it was only an 8 minute drive. Within that small time frame, my cruising speed was cut prematurely by the smell of smoke. As I pulled over the engine was struggling to run. The app at this point was telling me there was no vacuum advance. Luckily I wasn't far from home and made it back.

Then my communication with the company begins. I will not post that here as it will be posted in a pdf link for everyone to read below. These emails mostly are asking information about their design of their product so I can get a better understanding of what may have happened. Did it lose vacuum? I just measured healthy compression a week ago, why would shortly after my drive a piston burn up? Issues within the distributor? Maybe this piston was on it's way out already? Both possible and I agreed that there were too many variables to prove. You can see in the emails at one point I tried to diffuse the situation before tensions got high and just stated I would like a refund. The conversation was continued by the director of this company, Ron, and that ultimately I was just trying to scam him. Fast forward and Ron has lost all contact with me. I was to deal with the person I bought it from. Fair enough. I spoke with Ed. Now Ed is a pretty nice guy and even after all this I do believe he is. Ed confirms that there is too many variables and again, I agree, hesitantly. I was told to package it and send it back for a refund in which I, of course, agreed. Upon getting ready for packaging and removing a bracket you must install to mount the distributor I heard something rattling in the inside. I remove the cap to find the coil contact had broken off completely. In that process caused marring inside of the cap meaning it bounced around a bit before falling to the bottom. Whether that can cause problems with misfires? You be the judge of that. It leads me to my point of the multiple times it lost advance in a 20 minute window. Roughly the combined time of adjustments at idle and the first and final test run. How can I be confident that the internals of this distributor can do it's intended purpose whenever the distributor cap can only do it's purpose for 8 minutes? I sent this photo to Ed and Ed did not respond. I called after almost a full business day in which Ed admitted that he did see the photo. Ed reassured me that what happened is normal to happen to a distributor. 

We can also note from the emails that after asking 3 times how these distributors work, my suspicions were confirmed that if this product was to fail electronically that it loses all advance. Not a terribly huge problem but this is where I'm starting to have more faith in old 40+ year distributors over a shiny new one. 

Ending this I feel sorry for Ed. If I were in his shoes I wouldn't know what to do either. You can only do so much in this situation, I guess. I certainly don't know if I would have went with his route in saying "well, I normally charge a restocking fee but I'm waiving that for you." I understand we install aftermarket parts at our own risks. Seeing as I am, I don't know, the 1% I can see how it can be chalked up to user error. After the facts I do disagree and I do think the product is at fault. Do I expect anyone to help replace my engine? No. It'd be nice to cover some cost of it but I'd prefer to replace my engine because of my own stupidity and mistakes. Not someone else's. 

This may rub some people the wrong way. I'm sure some with a good experience with Ed will try to blame me. I don't care honestly. I can't gain anything from this at this point. I just want to share my story and hopefully prevent anyone from doing the same.

If you spent the time to read this, thank you. 

The pdf is only edited to remove all personal information of both parties and to condense. There is a lot of quotes and signatures in the original. It's still a nightmare but only 4 pages and will revise later. Sorry about the watermarks.

123.pdf

Edited May 23, 20195 yr by Rill Cosby

28 minutes ago, Rill Cosby said:

Well, to not keep you guys waiting I went out and decided to do a dry and wet test.

Piston number 4 being the culprit in bold.

Dry - 173 - 175 -178 - 137 - 178 - 178

Wet - 182 - 185 - 187 - 166 - 185 - 185 

As far as tearing down the head that will be a little ways from now. If ever.

The wet number is much better (all with in 10%). That would suggest a ring issue

Could be from detonation.  Detonation breaks rings and ring lands. 

Any chance you could describe or show the advance curve that you were using?  And the details of the engine?  Is it stock compression ratio?  Could be the problem wasn't losing advance but having too much. 

4 minutes ago, Patcon said:

The wet number is much better (all with in 10%). That would suggest a ring issue

That was my theory since the beginning. The problem was that there wasn't enough evidence to back that up, although that wasn't the purpose of this thread. I'm just going by the history of the engine, the few things I did look at and also, to be honest, the smell.

It's a ring issue like I expected and now we are right back to the beginning. What caused it? I'm still keeping my eye on detonation issues. Surprisingly enough it just so happens I installed a part that controls detonation greatly, that also shows signs of faults. Not only externally but showed malfunction internally. But the latter is my word against nobody elses. That is until Ed of 123ignition tests it, after he has to replace the cap.

3 minutes ago, Zed Head said:

Could be from detonation.  Detonation breaks rings and ring lands. 

Any chance you could describe or show the advance curve that you were using?  And the details of the engine?  Is it stock compression ratio?  Could be the problem wasn't losing advance but having too much. 

That is a mild advance curve,  usually that would be up at 34-37 by 3000 rpm.

3 minutes ago, grannyknot said:

That is a mild advance curve,  usually that would be up at 34-37 by 3000 rpm.

That is their factory installed curve for their distributor for our vehicles. I didn't even get to play with all the fun stuff.

That's what is on top of initial.   If initial was set to 10 then it's 39 at 8000 RPM.  Plus there's the MAP curve underneath.  

Ideally the timing would have been verified by a timing light.

2 minutes ago, Zed Head said:

That's what is on top of initial.   If initial was set to 10 then it's 39 at 8000 RPM.  Plus there's the MAP curve underneath.  

Ideally the timing would have been verified by a timing light.

Verified by timing light. Mentioned in emails and my original post as well.

21 hours ago, Rill Cosby said:

I have one and used one but the instructions state you rotate the distributor according to the direction your rotor within the cap rotates and stop once a light illuminates within the distributor. There is a small window you'd get this correct without a timing light. Other customers had this problem.

After installation is complete the car starts up no problem once timing is set.

This isn't enough.  The initial timing advance number needs to be verified with a light, at least.  Ideally, the person doing the install would then verify both MAP and centrifugal advance by revving the engine with and without the vacuum hose attached.  If you just go through their procedure and end up at 15 degrees initial you'll be over advanced when the engine is running.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that there is a post out there somewhere about the install procedure not working right and having to go back to basics.  Trust but verify.

Without the numbers there's not much to go on.

58 minutes ago, Zed Head said:

If you just go through their procedure and end up at 15 degrees initial you'll be over advanced when the engine is running.

That sure seems like that would be a fault of theirs. Your engine is too advanced because of their procedure. But that is not my case. Their instructions do not state to double check with a timing light, though I did. And I believe they don't say that for a reason which will be explained below. I had to use one to get it running. That seems to be the case for multiple people and also for me. This is where the timing light comes in to play. Why would you have a timing light available and set static timing at say 15? I wouldn't. I know static timing varies from vehicle to vehicle when using this ignition but static timing of 0 - 10 should not cause any issues here. I say that because

"Static timing is set at TDC. When you crank the engine, the 123 fires at 0 degrees advance until the engine starts and achieves 500rpm. Then the programming comes into play, activating the chosen curve and setting the idle advance at 10 degrees. It provides 10 degrees between 500 and 1000 rpm. Beyond that the selected curve takes over." 

Example

Following instructions gives you 10 degrees at 0 to 1000 rpm. Above 1000 rpm timing is according to the curve selected. 

Using a timing light setting 10 degrees up to 1000 rpm is exactly the same timing as above. 

Setting the timing to other than 10 degrees "shifts" the curve higher or lower by the difference from 10 degrees. So, if timing is set to 15 degrees at idle (under 1000 rpm) then the maximum advance will be 5 degrees higher than specified by your chosen curve. 

Looks like they have updated the instructions with more cap options, so maybe your feedback hasn't fallen on deaf ears.

 

http://www.123ignition.nl/files/manuals/123manual_TUNEPLUS.pdf

 

Buddy I'm genuinely gutted to hear your woes on this and do hope you save the engine. At least it affords you the possibility to build it into something meaner!

 

It's sounding like it might be a detonation problem, from too much advance.  Still haven't seen the initial timing, just the instructions for installing the distributor. 

Seems like a 50:50 fault.  123's instructions aren't clear, but, on the other hand. verifying timing is a basic automotive skill.  And the L series engines are known to be detonation prone, so knowing your timing is even more important.  One of those live and learn things.