So yeah, I ended up with fake NGK BKR8EIX plugs from Amazon... Sucks. I found after not many miles of supercharged driving that the gap opened up a lot. Car was cutting out at 8 grand then suddenly ran on 3 cylinders and now only runs on 4 cylinders if my old AP1 coil pack is in cylinder 4. I have several new coil packs and they all work in cylinders 1 to 3 but not in 4. Only the older AP1 coil pack works there and that coil pack has a higher resistance reading than the new ones do.

Is the EMS screwed?

 

Found this on an Evo forum, similarish issue. See what he did per AEM recommendation which inadvertently fixed his problem near the end of the thread (test firing each coil in the software)

https://www.evolutionm.net/forums/ae...ing-coils.html

 

Thanks a lot! That really does sound much like my problem and his solution sounds promising too! I must try the coil fire test soon. I also sent AEM an email about this so let's see what they say.

I'll report back her hopefully with good news

 

Yes, please keep us updated on here. Always good to have information available online for future troubleshooting. Never know when someone else will be having a similar issue. Good luck!

 

Good reason to skip Amazon. Jeff Bezos has enough money. He doesn't need any of mine. Hope you get things worked out. You're not the first to get screwed on Amazon. Let this be a warning.

 

Will do. I need to get into the EMS via AEM Tuner after work and see if anything looks out of place coil wise. I have been researching how exactly to test fire the coils. The manual says that there are spare coil drivers called coil 7 and 8. I'm still waiting on someone from AEM to reply to my email about this too.

 

Yeah I'm more weary of what I buy on both Amazon and eBay now. EMS works just fine and runs the car well. I just hope nothing is physically damaged in the coil circuit since, the bizarre thing is only my older AP1 coil pack works in cylinder 4 but none of the brand new, including genuine AP2 coil packs work on that connector yet they work in cylinders 1 2 and 3

 

AEM replied:

"The previous spark plugs could not put the EMS into some sort of failsafe mode. There isn’t one. Bad plugs could damage Coils but not coil drivers within the EMS. Your resistance readings sound within spec old or new. The difference is nil.

No burned wires and all OEM does not really mean much when you are talking about a 20 year old car.

If you can rev out on any type of coil used, it means that the issue is mechanical maybe wiring related in that the plugs on either the coil or the harness may be the culprit".

Note: the good news is after changing out those crappy plugs I can now rev out to 9200 with no hiccups! That being said, cylinder 4 only plays nice with the AP1 coil pack I currently have in it. All other new ones suddenly don't fire when connected there.