DIS: Overheating?

[shoteen95]

I'm still having some weird ignition problems after the removal and painting of my intake. I've relocated the groundstrap for the DIS to the top most bolt on the rear crossover tube bracket, and i've made sure to sand the tube and bracket where they meet, as well as the bracket where the ground strap and bolt contact.

Now my car's never stalled, nor has the tach dropped to zero while driving. Plus i never had any ignition problems before painting my intake. So that leads me to believe the problem is related solely to the intake and/or DIS.

A weird thing, after driving my car many miles, and letting it warm up to normal operating temps, i can get out and touch my intake, it barely gets hot at all; i can easily hold my hand on it without fear of being burned. But after i've shut the car off, the intake actually gets hotter, and stays hot for a long time. I used high temp paint (many coats on the intake), so i'm thinking that perhaps it acts as a sort of insulation. When the engine is running, cool air flows through the intake keeping it at a relatively cool temperature, but after the engine is shut off, the engine warms the intake..which is unable to disperse the heat as effeciently.

Now you can guess where i'm going with this. The crossover tube IIRC acts as a heatsink for the DIS, if the tube is unable to disperse heat like it should..could that effect the operation of the DIS? Keep in mind, this condition seems pretty appearant on hot days. It was about 95 here today, and my car started just fine after sitting all night, but later today after putting on about 30 miles, i tried to restart my car an hour or so later and it would not start. Cranked, backfired..caught for a few seconds and backfired out the intake like mad (dead tach), and eventually with my foot on the gas to keep it from stalling, the tach shot to life, and the backfiring stopped...idled like a dream.

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? Does an Overheating DIS even sound like a plausable issue?

 

[Ishodu]

Did you apply heat sink to the back of the DIS when you reinstalled it to the cross over tube?

 

[shoteen95]

i knew there was something behind the DIS for heat transfer, thats why i never removed it from the crossover. When painting, i just carefully masked off the whole module and didnt get a drop of paint on it.

 

[SHOtimer]

You should take off the DIS can clean the back of it along with where it mates to the cross over tube really well. And apply a thin coat of the heat sink to the back of the DIS and then reinstall it. You can buy the heat sink at Radio Shack.

Doug

 

[shoteen95]

has anyone ever relocated the DIS, is it possible? Seems like, for something that needs to be cool, mounting it to the intake doesnt seem right bright.

 

[Egg]

a heat sink is a block of aluminum or somthing similar used to pulll heat away from the source, "heatsink compound" is used to fill the microsopic gaps between the two surfaces. I had some arctic silver layin around and used that, so far no problems, Try to get the silicone based stuff.

I suppose you could relocate the dis but then you would have to find a way to cool it, get the required wires to it and make sure its well grounded. Might be more trouble than its worth

 

[ManySHOs]

I've actually been considering relocating it. I ground off all of the EGR castings and intake bracket bosses this past week. 'Been looking at the crossover tube with that "hmmmm" look. Part of the problem is finding a place to mount it. I think that the T Birds have it on the Firewall? I may be wrong..Extending the wiring harness wouldn't be fun but it wouldn't be difficult at all. Another issue is trying to make the extended harness look neat and keep it from getting tangled up with other stuff. At the very least, all connections should be soldered, heat shrunk and run inside of some loom. I'm just not sure where I would mount the DIS and be able to cleanly route the loom.

Ian