Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications 3.0L Duratec HELP! UFP unidentified Ford part!

Originally posted by Stazi:

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I don't think there are ANY Taurus engine will C.O.P. Please show me otherwise if I am mistaken - which takes me to my next question.
Can C.O.P. be used on the Contour? Is the connection, or the very least - the wiring the same as the coilpack setup? If so this would be awesome as we could use the Escape or ST220 UIM on the 3L oval poirt conversions - nice for boosted cars.

This all depends on whether the wiring is the same, the ECU output/programming is the same, AND the Escape uses the same "wasted spark" ignition setup.

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No, I didn't know what the new Tauri motors used for ignition systems. I assumed that with all the other duratec 3.0s using coil on plug that by 2002 they would all have used it since is superior. Should have known.

The coil on plug uses a separate coil driver for each coil. The gets rid of the wastespark methods rpm limitations. Remember that the time to fire the plug and resaturate the coil is based solely on rpm. At high rpm the wastespark method is not capable of firing once per revolution and still allow the proper amount of coil saturation; and therefore spark is degraded. The coil on plug method fires much like the multiport fuel injector and only has to fire once per two revolutions, effectively almost doubling the usable rpm range for that type of ignition system.
The rpm range of the wastespark is still above the normal duratec range however so this is only of secondary concern. The improvements in spark quality and the elimination of having problems in one cylinder affect the performance of another cylinder are nice bonuses though.

I tried to play around with a conversion option but it won't work the same way. You can adapt the pcm to drive pairs of plug coils so that it would be operated the same way as a waste spark method however it would solve the problem of direction of current flow that eats up the electrodes on one bank of plugs on our cars and would make the spark going to each cylinder more uniform. If you swap out the coil drivers in the pcm with ones that can handle running two coils at once in parallel then you can use them.
You can use an intermediate module to use the individual coils and not affect the pcm at all. This is how I was able to use the eManage to control spark on the duratec.

In the end the external module is cost prohibitive and it is just as easy to take the escape pcm with the engine harness and wire it in and then tune it with an SCT flasher. This gives all the modern benefits for ignition control too.