Performed ICM Delete! Success!!

[97a41.8t]

I performed the ICM Delete Mod that is shown here at Audigeeks.

Why?
The engine started to misfire so I thought, "Oh, it must be the ICM....time to do the ICM delete mod!"

Where you can buy the parts
Coil Pack Harness - http://www.ecstuning.com/Search/Repl...arness/ES7679/
Coil Packs - http://www.ecstuning.com/Audi-B5_A4-...nition/ES7536/

What I did differently than Audigeeks
To keep "redundancy" to a minimum, I found the wires from the ECU after the "Y" behind the engine. This was connected to the corresponding coil pack PIN 3. PIN 1 is constant power, PIN 2 was grounded on the valve cover, and PIN 4 is also a "ground" which I connected to the ICM Brown wire (can be found in the same place as the ECU wires after the "Y") that wasn't used by AudiGeeks. This is to prevent any back EMF or interference.




The "Y"


Couple things I have learned:
- Make sure the engine is running right before performing the mod.

Fuel injectors were not seated properly (plastic o-ring retainer was eaten by the engine). Caused initial misfire and didn't find out until I rewired everything for the third time

- DO NOT buy a used harness off craigslist

Misfires occurred while wiggling the wiring harness. I ended up repairing the entire harness.

- USE the wiring schematics (Chiltons, etc manual), do not follow "user" wiring charts/diagrams as they may be incorrect for your vehicle.

Compared Chilton's with wiring chart. Followed the wires to the actual coil packs and "user" chart/diagram was incorrect

If you have any questions, shoot me a PM or post here. I'll gladly help anyone in the Washington State area.

[geeky]

Hey, where are you located in washington? I'm in Bellevue and would love to do this "fix" If you're close I'd be awesome if we could meet up and you can help me with this.

[anger]

wow, where were you when i needed you?
http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...ess?highlight=

[97a41.8t]

Hey, where are you located in washington? I'm in Bellevue and would love to do this "fix" If you're close I'd be awesome if we could meet up and you can help me with this.

Hey, I'm over in Ellensburg right now but I'll be back over in Seattle this next week or two. If you have all the parts and a place to work, lets do it! I've been doing electrical for a while so I have pretty much all the tools. Shoot me a PM!

[gmx]

I performed the ICM Delete Mod that is shown here at Audigeeks.

- USE the wiring schematics (Chiltons, etc manual), do not follow "user" wiring charts/diagrams as they may be incorrect for your vehicle.

Compared Chilton's with wiring chart. Followed the wires to the actual coil packs and "user" chart/diagram was incorrect

If you have any questions, shoot me a PM or post here. I'll gladly help anyone in the Washington State area.

Are you saying Jeff's diagram is wrong?
Has anybody else that's done this on their AEB confirm? I just received my 034 replacement harness for later 1.8Ts and am now not sure what to follow..

[xdewaynex]

I plan on doing this and running the 2.0T coil packs as done in this thread...

http://www.audizine.com/forum/showth...ght=coil+packs

Cheaper coil packs, higher spark plug gap, and up to 15hp gain.

[Sidewayzracer]

just to confirm the rewiring allows for the use of the 2.0T coils, just curious before i start riping into the wiring loom and make a massive mess.

[gmx]

I'm going to bump this since I have more issues than I thought.

Pin2 from each coil merged together with the old pin 3 ICM ground.
Pin4 goes to the Valve cover.
The OP has it the other way around, I'm just asking for clarification on this.

I used 034's harness for the B6: http://www.034motorsport.com/ignitio...l-p-19338.html and soldered the connections rather than pinning.

I've redone my grounds numerous times and made sure (with simple continuity testing and resistance on a cheap DMM) that they're working. I'm stumped as to why I get heaps of misfires at even light loads. I swapped from 3k mile old FR5DTC to BKR7E gapped @ 0.035 and the misfires are much worse, comes in at even lighter loads.

[walky_talky20]

Bentley shows the following:
Pin 2 = "Ground Connection -1- in right front wiring harness"
Pin 4 = "Ground Connection, on engine block"

Mitchell shows the following:
Pin 2 = Ground at Left side of engine compartment
Pin 4 = Ground on Engine block

Mitchell (for 2001 Jetta 1.8T, which uses the same 4-pin coils) is more specific:
Pin 4 = Ground on cylinder head

[gmx]

I'm so lost, where do I go from here?

Swap pin 2 & 4 gnd points for the hell of it?

[xdewaynex]

I checked over my notes from when I done my swap, and you are correct that Pin 2 goes to the ICM Ground, and Pin 4 goes to the valve cover. When I done mine. Ive got a ground at the stock location at the front of the valve cover, a ground on the rear of the valve cover, and then I took some wire and connected it straight from the negative battery terminal to the valve cover. I havent had any problems in doing so.

[walky_talky20]

There is a reason they are separate, but most of the time you can get away with ignoring it. Basically there are high-power grounds for the big stuff (fan motors, starter motor, etc), and there are sensor grounds for the precision low-power devices (crank/cam sensors, coolant temp, TPS, etc). The worry is that the ground will get noisy during high power draw. For instance, the main ground line to the engine block is what grounds the starter. If that also supplied your crank sensor with ground, you might run into a problem with a crappy crank sensor signal during cranking. To ensure phantom, impossible-to-diagnose issues like that never happen, the manufacturers keep the grounds separate like that. Some manufacturers decidedly DON'T do this and end up with stupid problems, like this:
http://forums.maxima.org/4th-generat...lutch-job.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyDcM...eature=related

Anyway, the coils fit into this mess because they are both. They have a precision, low-power circuit (the built in igniter, aka ICM which uses pins 2 and 3) and they have the high power coil winding in there as well which uses pins 1 and 4. This is why they have 2 grounds that go to 2 different places for seemingly no reason.

[gmx]

I checked over my notes from when I done my swap, and you are correct that Pin 2 goes to the ICM Ground, and Pin 4 goes to the valve cover. When I done mine. Ive got a ground at the stock location at the front of the valve cover, a ground on the rear of the valve cover, and then I took some wire and connected it straight from the negative battery terminal to the valve cover. I havent had any problems in doing so.

I might take pin4 @ the VC directly to the neg post on the battery and see what happens next time.

[vtraudt]

Where to get the connectors (for DIY harness) that go onto the Bosch (4 pin) new coils?

[mysman]

Where to get the connectors (for DIY harness) that go onto the Bosch (4 pin) new coils?

I believe they are also used on Volvo and considerably cheaper than buying from VW/Audi (see connector #6):

http://www.volvopartswebstore.com/sh...ssembly=234714

[ddillenger]

Where to get the connectors (for DIY harness) that go onto the Bosch (4 pin) new coils?

Ebay. Search for audi c106. Then, offer him 7.95 for each plug.

[mysman]

I might take pin4 @ the VC directly to the neg post on the battery and see what happens next time.

It looks like on the AEB, the "ignitor" signal wire is really just the base drive of a very large NPN (bi-polar) transistor:

http://www.audigeeks.com/forums/index.php?topic=3181.0

It looks like the emitter is tied to the signal ground wire and the collector to the primary side of the coil. Being bipolar, the signal wire involves current drive (low-impedance base). If you loop the signal ground to the battery, you could create inductive loops which would slow the switching time, and thus, the spark peak voltage.

On the later ignition coils with the on-board "ignitor", or POS (power output stage), they probably changed to FET switches, with their high-impedance gate drive. So the current in the signal wire would be much lower, although the signal ground wire would still be supporting the current dump on the primary side of the coil.

Either way, you want to minimize inductance and capacitance in the wiring, to avoid slowing the switching speeds. I do think some over at Vortex was looking at the actual signals involved, the rise times and dwell times. It seems that the conversion is working well enough that most people don't care, lol.

[vtraudt]

I am getting ready for the first (of many, another 1.8T, then at least 2x 2.7T) conversion.
I bought the red Bosch coils and red spacers from Integrated Engineering (not so sure about the spacers; only seem to provide a side slot for the coil side slots).

Also bought the ECS harness. Coil connectors fit. But not sure what to do with the 2 wire looms ending in loose pins?

I thought I need to cut the ECU to ICM (5 pin) connector off and wire to the harness. NOT so, it seems.

Can someone chime in with help how to wire up the ECS harness on the 1.8T AEB?

[mysman]

I believe they are also used on Volvo and considerably cheaper than buying from VW/Audi (see connector #6):

http://www.volvopartswebstore.com/sh...ssembly=234714

Correction, those connectors are for the ICM delete, (show here for the V6, which uses two ICMs):

http://forums.quattroworld.com/s4/msgs/139690.phtml

On another note, there is an interesting thread on NefMoto concerning dwell times. It looks like the square AEB (non-POS) coils use roughly the same dwell time as the 2.0 coils. However, the next generation square AWM coils (w. onboard POS, like the ones used in this thread), use a higher dwell time:

http://nefariousmotorsports.com/foru...25925#msg25925

[vtraudt]

Is coil #1 the front (of car) one or the rear?

I need to determine where the signal wires from the ECU (on old 5 pin ICM ingoing connector) to which coil.

[98A4TurboAWD]

Is coil #1 the front (of car) one or the rear?

I need to determine where the signal wires from the ECU (on old 5 pin ICM ingoing connector) to which coil.

It is the cylinder closest to the front of the vehicle.

[vtraudt]

Thanks.

The darn color choice they used doesn't make it easy:

Here is my guess:

(front of car to back)
number of coil - ECU contact pin - ECU wire color
#1 - T80/70 - Grey/Yellow
#2 - T80/78 - Yellow/Grey
#3 - T80/77 - Red/Grey
#4 - T80/71 - Green/White

Photos below show the ECU signal wires (including the ECU thick brown ground). Green/White (for #4) and Red/Grey (#3) are clear. Not sure if I can properly differentiate between Grey/Yellow and Yellow/Grey though (see photos below).

May have to open the ECU box/connector and trace to verify.

[vtraudt]

The FSI harness I used for the AEB swap had
- 4 individual wires for +12V (to pin 1 of the FSI connectors)
- Ground to valve cover bolt (not sure if pin 4 or pin 2 of the FSI connector)
- 4 signal grounds into one ground

My AEB harness had also 4 individual wires for +12V. I soldered the individual of the coil harness all in one to the AEB harness all in one.

I combined the FSI harness 2 wire end grounds into one (grounded on valve cover ground on one end), AND connected the combined wire to AEB harness Ground (seem to go to ground terminal close to ECU).

I now understand the better way would have been to keep the 4 FSI connector 'thin' signal grounds on the valve cover ground alone (and NOT use their wire end at all), and connect the thick 'coil' ground to the AEB harness ground.

I will report back 'how it goes' with the current setup. May have to cut the FSI harness 'signal ground' to isolate the 2 grounds.

[jvega21]

Just finished my swap today with A1A2german and all I can say is WOW!!. Night and Day difference for me.
My car was stumbling and misfiring under heavy loads. I havent seen full boost in months. Today, I finally saw and held 15psi down the freeway. It was awesome. Im glad I did it.

[catbed]

Correction, those connectors are for the ICM delete, (show here for the V6, which uses two ICMs):

http://forums.quattroworld.com/s4/msgs/139690.phtml

On another note, there is an interesting thread on NefMoto concerning dwell times. It looks like the square AEB (non-POS) coils use roughly the same dwell time as the 2.0 coils. However, the next generation square AWM coils (w. onboard POS, like the ones used in this thread), use a higher dwell time:

http://nefariousmotorsports.com/foru...25925#msg25925

You have that last part backwards. The square coils have a much larger dwell time than the AWM coils.

[3 bar]

Just did mine with a junkyard harness. The 99.5 wire colors were slightly different. Luckily I had a multimeter and traced the wiring order from the pics and was able to solve my misfiring issue.

[Sickws6]

i need to do this.