Hi lads and lasses been a while since I posted here but have been keeping up with whats what.

I'm currently doing a wiring loom for a MK2 escort with a honda engine and gearbox in it. The guy wants to fit an acewell to it and I have a couple of questions regarding this.

for the ign warning light is it just a case of connecting to the w/l terminal on the alternator?? ( on my locost with a bosch alt i had to fit an additional 3 watt bulb to get it to work and a diode to stop the engine from running on).
Also for the speedo can I use the sender from the s2000 gearbox and how should I wire it ( any pinouts for the box plugs?)
Thanks in advance
Omega.

I have an acewell in the striker I'm building. I had to fit a 5w 47 ohm resistor in line to get the alternator to excite and to turn the light of on the acewell.

You can also set what voltage you want the light to come on at and go off at.

Cant help with the speedo. I know the acewell only uses 2 wires for the speedo and most cars use 3 or more including the type 9 sensor so its left me stuffed and I'm having to fit the magnet pick up instead.

Thing is the honda alt has a 3 wire plug on it
w/l
12v
ign

so not sure if the exite part is by the 12vign or not.
As for the box sensor i imagine is a hall sensor with a 12v + 12v- and a sense wire ( which would be the acewell ) but I don't know the pin out on the box.

I couldn't get the acewell to read off my gearbox speedo [same box as you are using ]. From what I can remember the acewell can't compute the pulse pattern that the S2000 sensor generates. I ended up putting magnets on the drive shaft - which was easy enough.

Edit - out of curiosity does the s2000 box mate to the k20 without an adaptor ?

[Edited on 28/12/15 by wylliezx9r]

Guys' you are always welcome to direct any Acewell Q's straight to me, I can usually answer most!

Re, battery light, it depends on whether you are talking older Acewellls like 3xxx or more modern (read dearer!) like 5xxx, 6xxx & 7xxx. Early units need a switched earth path on the alternator wire, with many alternators, such as the old Lucas ACR units the w/l wire on the alternator would be an earth until the unit starts to generate voltage at which point it becomes live, if you provide the same +ve voltage to each side of the LED then it obviously doesn't "see" any voltage & goes out, being an led it is very sensitive &, for instance, if you have a diode out on the rectifier you well see the light glow or flicker - you still have charge but not as much or as clean as it should be. Some alternators such as some Bosch & some Denso actually need the w/l wire to be fed with a live source b4 the alternator will work, I suspect in which case the LED in the Acewell would never pass sufficient current & you would need a work around as described above.

Later units, 5, 6 ,7xxx etc, actually measure battery voltage & are completely adjustable, so no reference to the alternator w/l connection is needed, just the fact that you have the unit connected up with +ve & -ve supplies is sufficient, you can set the voltage at which the light turns on & off during setup.

Re the transducer/VSS, again older, cheaper units, 3xxx etc have a slower processor, & hence are made to work only with the reed switch & magnet provided, the later units have a faster processor & unless the Honda is sending an unusual signal should work fine with the gearbox sensor, assuming it is a Hall type unit which nearly all are, you will have +ve, -ve & a signal wire, just connect your feed & earth up as normal & take the signal wire to the green Acewell wire for the speedo, earth the other acewell speedo wire. During setup set the P screen (no. of pulses per wheel revolution) to around 40 or so & the "C" screen (tyre circumference) to whatever your tyre is, typically around 1500/1600mm, this should give you a reading which you can then run against a GPS phone or satnav to set accurately, unfortunately we can't give accurate figures for each manufacturer as they all vary, tho' typically if you look at the original tyre circumference the sensor will probably have been giving around 4000 pulse per mile, so you can get a good idea of where to start from there. Use the P screen to make coarse adjustments & the "C" screen for fine adjustment, we always set so the speedo reads 2% or so high to give you a bit of leeway against speed cameras etc. - this will also be the correct way for IVA

I knew someone on here was an acewell dealer/techy expert.
Just couldn't remember who.
Thanks for that Russbost.
So on the honda alt the w/l wire would just be left off then ???

If you're running a later Acewell like 7xxx etc then from the Acewell side of things you can ignore the alternator wiring.

However, for the purpose of the alternator actually working correctly I can't say for sure, with the Lucas ACR you could just leave the w/l disconnected, but as said some alternators need a feed on that terminal to energize the unit to get it working, suggest ask on the Honda forums unless anyone here knows for sure?

OK thanks Russbost I'll do that. Also does the Acewell run ok with the tacho out from an emerald ecu (0-12 volt pulsed output) or will it need something else ??
It is indeed a 7xxx acewell unit.

Not familiar with the emerald unit, but it is intended to run from switched side of coil or using the lead as an inductive pickup so if you have a 0 - 12V pulsed output at the correct frequency for RPM from the Emerald unit it should be fine, you may need to damp the output with the 1meg resistor (included in the kit) in series with the lead