Fab9 COPS - Review

[16bit]

Hey everyone.

I haven't found much on the FAB9 COPS (coil on plug) on this site so I figured I would do a brief review of my experience.

http://fab9tuning.com/fab9tuning-plug-p ... rsion-kit/

My car is a stock motor NB8A with a rotrex supercharger on it. It makes around 10 or 11 psi boost and produces around 140 something WKW.

It has a 5th injector pre throttle body setup for extra fuel.

The tune is done using a xede processor which is an interceptor type solution. Not great but does the job for stock motor with up to 14psi boost (only comes with a 2 bar map sensor and can't handle large replacement 4 injectors)

I have been having some 'hesitation' issues lately that could be the supercharger slipping but I have been working my way around items that could be the cause and ignition was on the list (after a bunch of other things)

I have been thinking about doing Toyota COPS but to be honest the xede can't handle adjusting the dwell timing so I needed a plug and play solution and the FAB9 was reported to be exactly that.

For those interested I am still running wasted spark as standard but I believe these can work with sequential if you rewire them to suit. here is a link to a thread that discusses this http://www.miataturbo.net/megasquirt-18 ... ops-86363/

You can order these for sequential as an option too. But if you get the plug and play I believe its not too difficult to convert them after the fact if you need to.

So I ordered these from FAB9 after doing some quick searches and found people had decent success in the states. There were some early issues with these that I believe have been fixed since.

They took quite a while to get here as the guy makes them himself. The website does say it has a 2 to 3 week lead time before they are shipped so take that into account if you need these quickly.

So they arrived and they looked exactly like the picture. The work was very neat.

I followed the very basic instructions and it took my about an hour to install these. I had a few setbacks which added about 20 minutes so it really should be a 30 min or so job if you are in practise working on your car and have all the right tools. I haven't done much on my car for the last 5 years so am out of practice!

Overall review is the product is of good quality and everything seemed to be exactly the right length for the application.

They fired first time with no issues at all.

The car idled fine.

The car feels 'stronger' with these gauging by the but dyno. Nothing much but seems a little bit more responsive somehow.

Overall a great product from initial impressions.

Below is a list of what you need and some rough instructions of how I did it.

It really is very simple.

Tools you will need are:
Spark plug socket and matching extension with ratchet (likely 3/8 or 1/2 inch)
Drill with 4-5mm drill bit
Phillips screw driver
Pliers

Other items not in the kit you will need:
Cable ties
Short bolt and nut
Some form of spray paint or rust prevention

The general gist of what you need to do is the following:
Remove standard plug leads.
Remove standard plugs.
Remove plug lead guides from the rocker cover (screw back in screws to plug the holes and keep the lead guides incase you need to swap back to standard ignition).
Prepare new plugs by removing brass terminal covers (use pliers for this).
Install new plugs.
Install new coils, make sure to position sealing o ring for a good seal.
Unplug standard ignition from harness (will be a 4 wire grey connector on nb8a).
Do not uninstall standard ignition at this time.
Plug in connectors to the individual coils.
Plug in connector to harness.
Test fire car.
If all is fine find a place to mount the ignition module box to the fire wall.
Mark and drill holes.
Apply rust proofing.
Use bolt and nut to fix module to fire wall.
Use cable ties to neaten up wires with existing wiring harness.
Now option to remove standard ignition points, I personally left these on incase I need to swap back to stock ignition.

[Ruffian147]

Agree, great product.

I am running ITBs and have had the FAB9 COPS for over a year now and no problems.

[BlackR]

Thanks for the review. These are in my list of parts to get. 4 away from the top of the list. Good to hear that they do the job well.

[beavis]

While not COPS, I thought this might be a good place to educate people on alternatives. If someone disagrees, perhaps I should make a dedicated thread?
I went with LS2 coil packs.
These are used coil packs, available reasonably easily given they are on all your run of the mill V8 Commodore over here. Part D514A or 12573190
I made up a bracket to mount them - I opted for the below design as it locates the coil pack immediately above each plug, meaning all the plug leads can be the same length.


I looked into batch fire/wasted spark versus sequential, and opted for keeping it as batch fire. One of the main benefits/arguments for moving to sequential fire is the reliability/charge time, which in the case of an LS2 coil, isn't really a concern. LS2 coils are more than capable of handling the pokey little BP motors ignition requirements.

The plug leads were made using parts readily available from the likes of Summit racing, total cost around $100 for 2 sets of leads.
The stock wiring can be used, although different plugs need to be crimped to match the LS2 coils, and split out to mate coils 1-4 together and 2-3 together.


While this is nowhere near as 'convenient' as the Fab9 kit, cost is probably less. However I spent many hours of DIY'ing the bracket and wiring, and a few hours in front of the TV making the plug leads. These are considered pretty bullet proof and should be ever so reliable and support high HP.

A little more detail can be found here: http://mx5cartalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=58668&start=255#p889076
Plenty of LS coil details on the big forum: http://www.miataturbo.net/diy-turbo-discussion-14/lsx-coil-thread-82744/

[Sean]

Awesome little thread guy.
Thanks for sharing the experiences with both Fab9 and the LS2 setup.