Hi fellow Jag lovers – have been in process of getting my freshly rebuilt 3.8 Mk2 engine converted to EDIS and running on my test stand. Finally last night had the chance to fire it up. First attempt failed due to floats that were adjusted too high and the EDIS coil pack was mis-wired with coil A swapped with coil C. Both proved to be easy fixes and after this was sorted fired right up. I’d done enough pre-checking to know that the only potential wiring issue could have been the coils and it turned out that was correct. While there are many online references on how to wire these they all leave a little to the imagination.
Engine is 3.8 liter, 9:1, with HD8s, larger intake valves, mild high-lift cams, and aluminum flywheel. Quite pleased with the way it ran. Below video is second run with only moderate tweaking to the carbs. Still need to fully sort the carbs as I believe it’s running a bit rich.
Below is a video and some pics of the key components to the conversion. I’m using the engine hoist as a backup for my homemade test stand. The entire stand was made of scrap metal I had and the hoist is insurance in case it doesn’t hold. So far so good.
Looks really sweet. I use a colour tune (2 actually) to get a good starting point. Its quite informative to be able to actually see the difference a 1/4 turn can make as you approach the correct setting.
Thanks, gentlemen. Spent some time over the past couple days sorting out the carbs and a small oil leak at the rear of the engine. Thought at first it was the rear main seal, but turned out to be a couple loose bolts on the oil pan. Snugged them up and no more drip. Everything else is tight and fluids staying where they should.
Tuned the carbs to the specs in the manual, but agree that a Colour Tune or air/fuel meter would be helpful. Also adjusted the AED today to manual, will see how that results on next cold start.
Had Mike Eck convert my tach to be driven off the MegaJolt tach output. Hooked it up today to test and works great. Seems pretty accurate compared to what I was getting through my computer. Below pic shows the compare.
Ignition map came from Ray Livingston from the UK E-Type site. So far seems to work great. Eventually a road test will prove it out.
Trigger wheel is a 5.75" 36-1 wheel. I got it from triggerwheels.com in UK. The diameter is only slightly larger than the crank pulley. If I were to do it again I’d go slightly bigger. I had some complications positioning the crank sensor around the harmonic balancer. You can see the bracket I made to do this in one of the pics. This also required the connector to angle out towards the fan which is not ideal.
I brought the pulley and trigger wheel to a local machine shop. They milled out a circle roughly equivalent to the diameter of the backside of the pulley…then machined a very narrow flat onto the pulley itself. This made for a tight fit and gave me a slight gap for a good weld. Gap was because the pulley is tapered but the trigger wheel cut is not (but fit tight on the pulley on the forward edge). After marking TDC and positioning the wheel I welded it in place and then painted it.
Trigger wheel was the most complicated part of this…at least as I thought through the options. It turned out to be rather simple. I was hoping for a bolt on option…but glad I didn’t find this as that would have required removing the crank sensor to change the belt. My setup avoids that. I did have some interfere with the generator and bracket while installing the belt…but that was remedied by removing the fan pulley to slip it on.
It’s been a fun project and I think a completely sensible way to modernize in a tasteful way.
Btw…other parts: MegaJolt controller from autosportlabs.com here in Seattle area (manifold vacuum version with built in rev limiter), EDIS controller from eBay (NOS), coil pack from Summit Racing (Sreamin Deamon), EDIS connector is a modified 8 cylinder connector (requires removing a keyway) I found on ebay new (not easy to find), plug wires are Taylor carbon core resistor, coil pack plug wire connectors from triggerwheels.com (these seem to be hard to find), plugs are NGK BPR6ES, MDS spark plug boots (no resistance), and various bits from McMaster.
thanks for the detailed info…as I recall for me here in Oz, the easiest thing to do was to import a complete kit from Trigger wheels.com UK, about $AU700
I have not decided where/how to mount the trigger wheel.
It seemed to me as close to engine block would be best, but I also want to keep it simple & easily
worked upon. There are a few options with the 4.2, but not many examples
Yes, buying an entire kit might make sense for you. I’m not super familiar with the 4.2…but how would that be any different than for the 3.8? You might have a different ignition map, but isn’t the rest more or less the same?
I bought my car running not quite 3 years ago…but was not really drivable. So I don’t have a good before/after compare with EDIS…but from people that have had the before/after experience I hear it makes quite a difference.
