Road Tuning: Reluctor Sensor
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Reluctor Sensor
01.56
| 00:00 | A reluctor pickup produces a sinusoidal waveform, which means the direction of current flow and the polarity of the voltage output is constantly changing. |
| 00:09 | The amplitude of the waveform also changes with engine speed. |
| 00:13 | This means that the peak voltage produced increases with engine RPM. |
| 00:18 | If your ECU has an option for turning a pull up on or off for the trigger input, this should be set to off with the reluctor sensor. |
| 00:27 | There are a couple of important points here. |
| 00:29 | First, we need to be certain that the polarity of the sensor wiring is correct. |
| 00:34 | A reluctor sensor has two terminals and it will produce a signal regardless of which way the sensor's wired. |
| 00:41 | In its correct polarity, the waveform will look like this. |
| 00:46 | If the sensor's wired backwards, the signal will look like this. |
| 00:50 | Basically the waveform is inverted. |
| 00:54 | If the sensor's wired back to front, the engine will still run, but it will result in timing drifting as the engine RPM increases. |
| 01:02 | At best this will result in wildly inaccurate timing and poor running. |
| 01:07 | In a worst case scenario, it could cause engine damage, so we need to be sure it's correct. |
| 01:13 | The best way to confirm the polarity is to connect an oscilloscope to the sensor and look at the waveform the ECU's receiving. |
| 01:21 | This makes it very clear if the sensor's wired correctly and you can check the waveform while cranking the engine. |
| 01:27 | You don't actually need it running. |
| 01:29 | Most people don't have an oscilloscope though, so another option I use is to check for timing drift once the engine's running. |
| 01:37 | We'll look at this in detail in the base ignition timing module. |
| 01:42 | As well as the polarity, we also need to be concerned with the arming threshold and filter. |
| 01:47 | We'll deal with these perimeters separately in this module. |
