Install Daytona Sensors CD-1 Ignition Mustang Fox SN95

I said I was going to do this, and I am finally getting around to it. The title of this thread is to make it easy to search for on the internet. It's probably not going to be relevant to the people who frequent this forum. When I went to install the CD-1 ignition box in my car, there was almost no information on the internet at all. Also the Daytona Sensors tech guy was on vacation that week. If I hadn't had a friend that used to work for the company who I could call, it would have been a lot harder. If you are not installing this box on a factory ECU Mustang, there is still information in this post that will be helpful to you.

The ignition setup comes with 29 pages of instructions. Some things are covered in great detail, some things are not covered at all. Like the little aligator clip on the USB interface adapter; yes that goes to ground; not even mentioned in the instructions. A lot of it is where they tell you what to do, but now why to do it, or how the logic in the box works. So I am going to cover just a few things not covered in the instructions. What I am writing is in no way a substitute for reading the instructions. I am just covering material not in the instructions, or not adequately explained.

I installed this on a 95" Mustang GT running a factory ECU and a manual transmission. I am also using a nitrous system.

Basic wiring.
Red (Pin 1) goes to the positive Wire going into the ignition coil
White (Pin 12) goes to the negative wire going into the ignition coil
That part is just like an MSD.
Violet and Green are not used
Brown (Pin 11) goes to both the tach, and the USB Interface. In the kit there are a bunch of connectors included, so you can unplug this wire from the tach and plug it into the USB interface. Then you are supposed to clip the stupid aligator clip to a ground. I don't know anyone that spends hours soldering all these wires in, and then leaves it so that you have to unplug something and then hook an alligator clip some bolt. You can cut the alligator clip off and hardwire that black wire to ground. The other wire on the USB interface can be soldered into the Brown wire as well, essentially hard installing the USB interface pigtail into the car. I mean that's how you really want it anyway.

I wired my nitrous system according to Figure 7 on page 8 of the instrustions. There are a bunch of diodes included in the kit. The only diode I was instructed to use was on the Gray wire (GPIO2). I don't know much about diodes. There is a tiny grey band on the diode. That gray band goes towards the ignition box, and away from pin 86 on the nitrous relay. One of the selling points for me on this box was that it could read throttle position voltage and activate the nitrous. So no more stupid cheesy 50 cent switch hanging off the throttle body that fails half the time. On my car, the Throttle position input was the gray wire with the white strip on the ECU. I got all of my factory wiring information from the diagram in the back of the Haynes manual, it was more than adequate. Obviously you will want to do a continuity test to verify that. Wide open throttle for my car was 4.65 volts. You'll need to know that, because you will have to go back and program the box to what voltage you want the nitrous to activate at.

The blue wire is the 2nd stage rev limiter. Almost everyone uses this for their launch RPM. One of the things I was told from my friend that was counter intuitive is that activation of the 2nd stage rev limiter DOES NOT interupt nitrous activation. So if you hold the throttle to the floor on the 2nd step, and the TPS shows over your designated voltage, it's going to turn the nitrous on while you are sitting on the line. I thought that was important to mention. You have to wire in a 5 prong relay seperately to interupt the nitrous circuit while the 2nd step is on. This is a pretty common practice, but if you are unsure how to do it, ask below.

I did not wire the system in to the line locks as I have a manual car, and burnout max RPM is not an issue for me. I would speculate that is one of those situations where you have to put a diode in. I didn't use GPIO3 at all.

The ignition box assumes that you have have a race car with an exterior electrical disconnect should there be an electrical short causing a fire. This box is intended to be installed on race cars, and there are no instructions on circuit protection for street cars. The box says it runs on 5 amps. I used to run my MSD box on a 30 amp fuse, and never had a problem. This box blew the fuse one time. I switched it for a 30 amp circuit breaker, and there have been no problems since. I am also using the MSD electrical noise silencer on it, and that seems to work fine too.

Now comes the fun part, getting to programming the box with a computer. You will need a Windows laptop or desktop computer. It will not work on a Windows tablet, I tried. I am a Linux guy, and the only computer I had handy that worked was my wife's old Windows 7 laptop. The box comes with a CD ROM with a ton of files on it. Daytona Sensors makes a whole bunch of performance electronics with rudimentary software to operate them. They put all the software for all their different electronics on one CD, and distribute that CD with everything they sell. You are looking for a folder called PC_Link. In that folder will be a file called "Windows Installer.xxxxxxx.exe." Run that installer, and that's all you need.

Getting the COM port to work was a little tricky for me. I followed the instructions, and Windows did not automatically find the driver for the ftdi chip. The Daytona Sensors box uses and FTDI chip, which is a multi use chip for a bunch of things. So the Daytona Sensors instructions instruct you to go to www.ftdichip.com if you have any problems getting the driver to run the COM port. The website does not know that you are a car guy, not a computer guy, and has no idea that you are simply trying to program an ignition box in your car. I spent an hour on this. There were 10 page instructions describing the difference between VCP, and D2XX, and they might be integrated, and then to download a driver, and then to right click on the Port, and then to type in a manual path to the file on the computer, etc. So here is what you really need to do. Go to www.ftdichip.com, on the left side there is a menu bar, click on "Drivers" then "VCP Drivers." Scroll down, there will be a spreadsheet of different drivers available. The very first option is Windows, It has the downloadable drivers to the right as x86 and x64 versions. Ignore that. Go the comments to the far right, and the first has a hyperlink that says "Available as a setup executable." I clicked on that, and the install Wizard popped up, accept terms and conditions, etc, and that was it, the software linked with the ignition box. I think I had to go to the Device Manager in the Control Panel to see what Com Port the ignition box was plugged into, then go into the settings menu on the Daytona Sensors Software and select that matching Com Port Number. There is something in the instructions about going to Advanced Settings and setting the latency timer to 2 for better performance. I did not do that, and it seemed to work fine.

Best of Luck, I may add or edit this post later if I learn new things.

Kurt