Ignitech programmable ignition on the everyday TR1

My everyday TR1 is not only one of my preferred rides for commuting, but also my test-mule for the turbo-project. After suffering from some ignition issues, by the end of last season, I reverted from my Ignitech TCI-P4 box back to the stock ignition, which in fact was a bit of a shock, mainly because I had fine tuned my Ignitech a lot. And just to save Ignitech's reputation, before you even doubt it, it was a duff crank position pickup that caused the box to lose its position.

The box itself looks very unassuming, but has got a RS-232 connector on the back.

 All you need to program it is a USB-to-Serial-connector cable (mine's from Prolific) and then turn on the ignition so the box is powered up.

 Furthermore you need Windows of some sort. I am running this on a virtual machine, as I run Linux on the workshop pc. And ontop of that Ignitech's Sparker software in the matching version for your hardware. At the moment this is Sparker-TCI v.88.

 Hit the read button and you're presented with the preset curve, save that as a reference and play around with the curve. The curve below is far from optimal and produced a notable bit of hesitation when accelerating as it was advancing the ignition quite violently.

Now check out this curve: Generally you'll only want as much advance as absolutely necessary, as too much ignition advance will lead to pinging (detonation) and make the engine run hotter than necessary, which is a bit of an issue with my TR1 engine anyway. Especially now that I've raised the compression ratio to around 10.3:1 from the stock 8:1 ratio.