International Lancia Forums

Hi,

does anyone have experiences with the 123 tune ignition system for the Fulvia. Does it work with the standard electronic rev counter on a series 3 Fulvia?

Thanks a lot!

Unless the original Marelli distributor is brand new, the 123 dizzy will improve things. On standard engines the Fulvia 4SR works very well. See http://www.viva-lancia.com/specials/ignition . If you have a non standard engine or just like to experiment, the TUNE does well if you program the proper curves into it. I use the 4SR without vacuum on my own cars. The TUNE version has a vacuum input. It is not available without the vacuum. If you do not connect it, it operates as a version without vacuum.

It works with the S3 rev counter. Or rather the rev counter works with the 123 4SR as well as the 4 SR TUNE.

Another matter is that the power rating of the input resistor of the electronics of the Veglia rev counter is underrated. It is a 0,25 watt resistor. It should be a 1 watt resistor (PR01) or 2 Watt (PR02) if 1 Watt is not available. It is the standard beginners fault for electronic engineers when designing pulse electronics for the first time. I made it my self 35 years ago. This resistor will bake brown and ultimately fail with any ignition. I did post a circuit diagram of the rev counter electronics on this forum some years ago.

Fulvia engines are sensitive to the electrode gap. This is the case with an original Marelli dizzy as well as the 123 dizzy. I use NGK BPR7ES with the gap set to 0,6mm. On new spark plugs the gap is always larger. You have to adjust the gap. See also http://www.viva-lancia.com/fulvia/qanda ... kplugs.php. Or I use the NGK BPR7EIX iridium spark plugs. When you want to use these DO NOT adjust the gap. Do not touch the electrodes. The risk of breaking the tiny center electrode is too high. The tiny iridium electrode will spark well in any circumstance over any distance.

In distributors with electronic advance the position of the rotor relative to the contact in the cap varies when firing. That in combination with the higher spark voltage makes it necessary to replace cap and rotor every 30.000 km. It is a good idea to have a spare cap and rotor in the boot.

It is also a good idea to use good plug cables. Some decades ago there were only copper conductors. Some people still think that copper gives the best spark. However after some cycles of increasingly tougher RFI and EMC requirements some have come to the conclusion that subtlety gives an excellent combination of performance and life time.
Do not use copper. It only reduces the life time of contacts and electrodes.
Avoid carbon fiber cores. It crumbles over age and introduces a resistance in the circuit. It helps against radio interference but does not lengthen the spark.
Best is to have a wire wound core. The inductance of the core stores energy and the spark lasts longer. It also gives excellent interference suppression which is good. After all, there is quite a bit of advanced electronics in the dizzy.

Thank you very much! This was exactely the information I was looking for

Thank you for asking. It gave the opportunity to exchange information.

Another thing The timing.

The manual says to use the built in LED for timing the dizzy. This is ok for an initial setting.

The triggering is through magnets. The magnetic fields of these magnets are not identical. That is why electronic distributors have phase correction. It is not a luxury. It is necessary because of the small differences in magnets.

For the phase correction to work, the spindle has to turn. The electronics also needs some time to do the calculations. All in all you can have an error of about 3 degrees. Usually you will have this error.

The proper procedure is to use the LED for initial timing when you are mounting the unit.
Then use the stroboscope to time the unit at 1000 rpm or slightly before the dynamic advance starts.
Strictly between you and me, best is to time the unit (any dizzy) at max rpm (or at least at max advance). Engines fail more often at high rpm than at low rpm.

So I did get the 123 tune installed it today. Just programmed the advance curve of the standard Marelli distributor to it for the beginning, no vacuum so far.

However, the car will not even fire up now. Not even with a lot of starting fluid. I checked everything, wiring is fine, green light just starts showing through the slot at /8 static timing point for cylinder no 1, and I m 100% sure that it was not 180° out when I removed the old distributor.
Coil, plugs, plug cables are all new.

Is there anything else that I could still check?

The only thing I am not perfectly sure about is the green light. In my current setting, you can just about see it, however the diode is still partially obscured by the slot in the rotor. Should I turn it further counterclockwise, i.e. advance it further, until the diode is fully visible? Would have tried that next anyway, but battery is dead now…

Is there any other way I can check the static timing, similar to using a test lamp on the points on a normal distributor?

Thanks a lot!

Ok, problem solved.

Green light actually lights up at two points within the slot of the rotor, right at the start of the slot and again close to the end of the slot. This is not exactely explained in the manual for the tune model, but they do sort of explain it in the manual for the standard version.

Maybe this information is useful for someone installing the tune version.

Car now fires up and runs beautifully, much better than with the old distributor, I am very pleased with the result so far!

Actually in my case, the green light was quite accurate, did not have to adjust a lot with the strobe light.

Now I can start playing with the advance curves