Taking out timing at the hit

Either one works just great. I am tuning cars with both the Leahy EM Timer and the 8973. A lot depends on the rules because some associations do not allow the 8973.

The Leahy EM timer can control your entire fuel system, launch retard, retard when you shift gears and have an over boost protection that will slap in 20* retard if your boost gets over a set amount.

The 8973 has only one timer/rpm switch that can control one fuel solenoid. You can retard on the shift but you need to hook a hobbs switch up to the Lenco line to do one for the shift into second gear. It has a retard for going into 3rd. The 8973 also has overboost protection if you use the Racepak MAP sensor. One of the advantages of the 8973 is it drives a tach or a shift light without any other box. You can also adjust the shift light RPM for each shift without the driver knowing it because the driver and car reaction times are different for each shift point.

 

Kiss

KISS - Keep it simple stupid

Easiest way to do it is to put a six shooter on with one of the simple leahy boxes, I think they call it the 10 channel box. If you want to make a change, you can just change a chip, if you want to change the timer, it's as easy as setting your alarm clock.

If you want a box that does about 450 things that you'll never need to use, and makes it a pain in the ass to get to the 3 things you do want it to do, along with doing some other things whenever it feels like it, you'll love MSD's 8973. As a matter of fact, I hear BAE is thinking about giving one away with every order over $15. Ingenious marketing strategy, they'll more than double their investment with the parts people will tear up.....

 

There are several ways which that could have been done very fast with a 8973. You could have used the MSD small handheld programmer plugged into the 8973 serial plug or you can put toggle switches onto a two or three of the Step Retards and have preprogrammed retard values in the Step Retards such as in your case 5* in one and 3* in the other. Then all you have to do it flip up a switch and apply 12 volts to that Step Retard in any combination of the two or even three toggle switches to give you 3* or 5* or both for 8* or more. (those retards degrees are just pulled out of my ear). You can flip these toggle switchs up or down right up to staging.

As far as the early KISS statement early that all depends on the the User's expertise level. My father in-law can't even figure out a plain cell phone so for him KISS is the old land line phone. I use and understand a BlackBerry so KISS for me is at BlackBerry level. I know other people that own BlackBerrys that don't understand what half the functions are but that doesn't mean those functions are useless to somebody in the know.

 

DC Winters, you are correct. I sorry for not giving enough detail. I was doing talking about it at an upper level. I run the Hobbs switch to a Digi-Set timer that I set for how long I want to keep the Step Retard applied. The "Sec" in the Step Retard is the amount of time to ramp the retard back to zero after the Digi-Set has turned it off.

So on the shift to second the air pod activates the Digi-Set timer which in turn applies 12 volts to the Step Retard. The when the Digi-Set turns the 12 volts off then that "Sec" is the ramp time back to zero degrees on the retard.