Help! Moon/refund/ the law.

Come on Jim

Its like watching an episode of Lost

 

Patiance KoppaK,go work on yer kustom while you wait.

 

Here goes from the beginning... Picked Ken and Chico up from the airport friday afternoon and drove down to North American speed shop at Farnbourgh to borrow a electronic dizzy just in case the system wouldn't work with a points dizzy (thanks to Miles and Billy top blokes). Then proceed back to mine. Arrived back at around 4.00pm Then we went straight to work. Ken and Chico got straight to work installing the throttle bodys while i plumbed the wiring loom not forgetting Julie supplying the constant tea and strong coffee.
After a couple of hours the car was running. Then Ken spent a few hours mapping the ECU. Finished off around 9.00pm as the noise is abit excessive and i didn't want to annoy the neighboards too much (not yet anyway). Dropped them at the hotel for the night.

Saturday started at 9.00am. After a couple of cups of tea and coffee we got to work. Spent about another hour mapping the system for cold starting. Then it was time to hit the road. As normal for this time of year it was raining, so it was going to be fun with the crossplies and no roof.
So off me and ken went for a long test drive. While i was driving Ken was constantly mapping the ECU under driving conditions. The rain started to really chuck itself down. When i got it sideways (totally under control....not)down the highway in the fast lane with the foot to the floor we thought it was time to head back to let the weather pass.
Time for a few more cups of tea and a dry off. The rain finally passed so we headed back off for another drive only got about 1 mile away then the car started to badly miss and stall, just managed to make it back home.
After about half an hour of checking and double checking we found that the coil was burnt out and the condensor had gone. So at that point we decided to try the electronic dizzy. Half an hour later it was ready to try again. Turned the key and she fired right up. Done a routine check on the timing and fitted new plugs and we went back out onto the road for a few more hours for more mapping. Arrived back home then picked up Chico for a quick spin. He was a bit hesitant about going has a heard about my style of driving (what ever that means). I think he enjoyed it......I dropped them back at the airport this morning.

The conclusion is that the car runs better than it ever has. More power right through the rev range, better acceleration even hit 6250 rpm at one point (which i won't be doing again) and still had more to go. Watch out Mr Cardy i'm going to get back the record.
So the system does work and works well but you do need to know what you are doing to map the system plus the engine and ignition have to be in full working order so it doesn't give the ECU the wrong information.
Hopefully this will be the turning point and Moon will resolve everybody's other issues they have with them.
Even though there is no excuse for taking over 2 1/2 years to sort this out, they have resolved the problem and hopefully won't let any other problems take this long.

At the end of the day the real THANKS goes to you guy's and doll's of the HAMB, because without your support this would probably still be unresolved.

 

Great news at last, too late for the Moon T shirt though. So Jim when you up the boost on the old girl and connect the Nitrous are you able to re-map to suit? What do you mean you haven't told anyone about that? Sorry

 

Thats what you told me lastnight! hahaha ;-)

all joking aside, in the end they got off their ass's & resolved the problem my hats off to them.
Lets hope they can keep up the good work & give their customers what they would expect from a name like Moon.

Kev.

 

Yep, can remap when thats done but who told you. Can't keep anything a secret nowdays......

 

great to hear,


have been following this and thought that it wasnt going to be a nice ending. maybe a little bit too late, but better to have this outcome than an expensive wall hanger!

 

Thats awesome, Jim. Glad your ride is running. Just sucks it took so long.

 

Glad its all sorted

 

Good news all round, Jim. Except for everybody else in the Meltdown, of course

Well done to the guys at Moon for doing the right thing, too.

 

My ?'s are:
Was the cause condensor break down/failure or was the injection/ecu not set up properly when it was installed originally
Is the electronic ignition what is required for this type of set up in order to get it to function @ it's best
All in all It is good to see that both Chico & Ken backed up a product that is handled by their businesses.
I see ads for those in almost all of the publications, know that they are not cheap by any standards.
I worked with most factory injection set ups & all use a type of HEI.
Kudos to all of the HAMBers who contributed to this post, because I feel that this post is what it took to have the problem islolated repaired & the issue resolved. Many people were watching this one!!!!

 

Excellent!! So much for not running it again!

I told Kev it's a shame you can't use all that power anymore - you'll get little bitty rubber bits stuck to that pretty paint!

So, will we see you at the Meltdown Reliability Run in May then?

 

THIS IS A MESSAGE TO US ALL
THEY CALL THE FIRM MOON AND ALL THEY DO IS SHOW THERE ARSE AT YA? DON'T KNOW ABOUT YOU GUYS BUT WHEN I SEE A BARE ARSE I GIVE IT A GOOD SLAPPIN? ?

 

Hmm. Thanks for that.

You been drinking, Andy?

 

''ER NOTE TO SELF'' FINISH READING THE DAM THREAD BFORE MAKING STUPID STATEMENTS WHEN HALF FULL OF VODKA ? DOE?
OH YE GLAD ITS SORTED OUT, LOOKS LIKE A GOOD SEASON AHEAD

 

I'm glad to hear that you got the injection working and that Chico FINALLY made good to you.

Would it be possible to get some really in depth details as to why the system was so hard to get to work? What exactly did Chico and Ken do that the others couldn't? I guess what I am looking for is information that might save others from having to go through this.

 

From what I can make out Chico and Ken brought the new system with them, the one Jim was promised 2 years ago when he returned his original system.

 

Tindog,

That is a bit harsh.

Have you read the whole post?


Chico came through in the end and the car is running , according to Jim better than it has ever run.
From the time of Jims purchase to the conclusion was way too long and it should never have taken a public airing and embarrasment for something like this to get resolution, but to Chico's credit he came back directly when he was alerted to the thread on the HAMB, and then put things in place to get it sorted.

I just hope Jim is happy with the deal now.....not withstanding the two years of frustration.

 

Jim,

Been follwing this thread since it began, glad everything worked out in the loooong run. The karmic hot rods gods will reward you for your patience.

 

Here's some answers to some of your questions:
Cyclone Kev: The reason the coil and condensor broke down was a simple error of leaving the ignition on without the engine running. The reason this happened was because we were writing down values from the computer so we had a hard copy of the mapping references (the computer is wired from the ignition keyed live. Thus causing the coil to over heat.
The system will work on points or electronic ignition but seeing we had the elctronic diizzy we used that instead.

Ernie: I should be there all being well, sounds like a good weekend.

Loogy: I will post a more indepth answer tomorrow night about the reason's why the system wouldn't work when it was originally fitted.

KoppaK (John): The system they fiited was the original that i had bought.

 

When I read Jims last post these were some of my exact thoughts Kevin.

Electronic Fuel Injection is just that .... electronic.....digital. Points ignition is analog and way to harsh electronically and way to inaccurate for any EFI that I have worked with. In fact I would be surprised if the ECU could even read the points ignition pulse , let alone control it.

My question now is whether the instruction book from Moon is adequate? Is Chico and/or Ken going to address the issue and see that no other owner can have the same problems again?

It took time and frustration for Jim, and Moon's reputation took a knock, as I said before to Chico's credit he came straight back with an answer and a committment to sort it.

It still took more time , but I am sure that Chico had a lot of things to put in place before he made a trip across the Atlantic to fix things.
How many CEOs ( from any sphere of business) will make an international trip to sort out a problem with an item sold for a few thousand dollars?
Ken doesn't even work at Moon anymore and yet he went to England with Chico, fitted the unit and tuned it.
Sounds like Jim gave them some real old hotrod driving in the rain to keep them on their toes too.....or was it payback?? lol
The total time taken for the result is dissapointing, especially as Jim had made a couple of trips to the USA and also paid extra for an updated unit which was not delivered until the
" POWER of the HAMB "
was brought into play.
As regards Moon ,( and others who I beleive have sold the soul of hot rodding)
I still think that there is too much hype and to much emphasis on selling junk, t shirts , caps and stickers rather than hot rod parts, but that applies
to all of the old hot rod institutions with new owners, not just Moon, it is a sign of the times and an unfortunate reflection on society , that some people would rather buy some trinket to associate themselves with and gain "instant recognition" , than do something which deserves recognition, and which people applaud for the acheivement.

There was a time when if you had a "Moon " sticker or T shirt , it meant something ......especially if your hotrod actually achieved something with that Moon equippment, now every dickhead with a Honda has the stickers, the T shirt and the cap, all they achieve with them is ......ah nothing, except for making the vendors a bit richer.


Going forward , I applaud Chico and Ken for having the balls to front up publically and sort this . I am sure that Chico has many other issues to deal with resulting from this, not the least of which is customer relations , staff training , quality control and probably technical manual issues....
SEMA awarded the Moonjection new hot rod product of the year status in 2003, lets hope it can now live up to the reputation that Moon had in the past.
Maybe Chico and or Ken will find the time to give us a report on the events from his perspective???

 

LOL Tindog,
I guess I take too long over posts, you had reposted while I was writing mine, and has happened again with Jim reposting with more details while I was tapping away at the keyboard.

 

I only have one question. Is this thing going to work as good as my pot-belly Rochesters and points ignition? ever?

 

Oh right....thats what Kev told me this morning when I called him

Good to hear it finally got sorted tho Jim, wonder how much of an impact this here thread had on the situation tho....

See you two soon.

 

A whole lot ,that was amazing!!!!

 

This is a late note: Just wanted to say thanks Jim for the update and I'm sure glad that Moon did the right thing and took care of a 2 1/2 year issue. Its a shame it took that long . . . and probably happened due to "pressure" from the HAMB, but they really came through in the end. Hopefully they've learned their lesson as far as customer service goes . . . and maybe some HAMBers learned that even electronic fuel injections are only as good as the person who does the sizing, mapping, tuning, etc..

Let us all know how things continue to work . . . post a picture of your setup as well.