advanced efie design

building your own efie will probably not be a big money saving proposition. in fact, if
you give a value to your time spent on the project, and figure you should get minimum
wage for that time, you will probably lose money. i'm not telling you this to discourage
you from doing it. if you're a hobbyist and want to know the ins and outs of the device
intimately, and take pleasure in building a project such as this, then by all means go for it.
however, if you're just trying to save money, you'll be disappointed by the few dollars
you save and the amount of hours of work it takes to do so. okay, fair warning. if i
haven't taken the wind out of your sails, then read on:
the efies we produce are based on the design originated by eagle research. they have
produced the most advanced design of it's kind that i am aware of, and if a better design
existed somewhere, i'm pretty sure i would have at least heard of it. their design is not
patented and is open source, meaning anyone can build devices based on that plan
without patent or copyright infringement.
however, since the cost of the plans is minimal ($8 last i checked), if you want to build
your own efie, you must first purchase the plans/manual from eagle research. you can get
them here. i'm not giving out for free, the benefit of their research, when it can be
obtained for such a reasonable amount. however, what i will give you is the benefit of my
subsequent research into the design, and how to end up with an even better product.

where to find your parts

you can get many of your parts from radio shack. resistors, diodes, and your led (if used),
wire and circuit board material can be used from radio shack. but the following parts,
should not be purchased from radio shack, as you will get parts not made for an
automotive environment. the voltage regulator, the 555 timer chip and the electrolytic
capacitors will not be adequate. radio shack's versions of these parts are designed for use
in temperatures from 0 to 85 degrees centigrade. automotive parts are supposed to be
rated for temperatures of -40 to 125 degrees centigrade. you may think that you won't be
under freezing much and 85 degrees c is a pretty high temp. however, you don't want to
even be close to the rated extremes of your parts. you want to well within their operating
minimums and maximums.
so get these parts from a larger outfit that has them in the automotive specifications
ranges, such as digikey, allied electronics, newark or mouser. they cost, at most, a few
cents more. allied is probably the cheapest, but digikey is nearly as low, and has a wider
selection of the parts you will need. check the ratings on them and get minimally -40 to
105 c, but preferably get -40 to 125 c. i'll list some digikey part numbers at the bottom of
this paper that you can use.
the voltage regulator
i recommend using a 9 volt voltage regulator instead of 12 volts. the problem with a 12
volt unit is it drops 2 volts minimum from it's input voltage. if your input voltage is 14
volts or more, then the output will be 12 volts. however, if the input voltage is 12 volts
(for instance), the output voltage to your efie is going to be 10 volts due to the minimum
2 volt drop in voltage by the regulator. when your engine is running the alternator is
charging the battery, and is producing about 13-1/2 volts, but it's fluctuating slightly all
of the time. therefore the output of the regulator will be 11-1/2 volts, and mirroring the
car's voltage fluctuations. this must be eliminated for good steady efie voltage output. i
use 9 volt voltage regulators and they are more than adequate for our purposes.
note that there are 12 volt regulators that have lower voltage drops. these are rarer and
generally more expensive. they are often labeled "ldo" for low dropout. these could also
be used, but beware that some of these still have as much as 1.5 volts of voltage drop,
which will still be quite close to having the same problem. if you find one with a .5
voltage drop, this would be adequate.

specific part numbers

the only part you'll have trouble finding is the transformer. you'll probably just want to
use the one i use in the efies i manufacture. i get them from digikey and the part number
is listed below. it's specs are almost an exact match to the rhombus part specified in the
manual, and i've found that they are interchangeable, so use whichever is available.
i've given a specific spec for the timer. i've found this timer to be a superior chip to others
in the 555 timer class, and i recommend you use it. i've listed both the surface mount
version that i use, and a through hole member of the same family. the through hole
version is only rated -40 to 105c, which is adequate and is the highest rated of the
normally stocked through hole version of the ship.
c1 should be 10 nf (.01 uf). r5 should be 3.3k. r4 should be about 4.4k, but i've found that
substituting a 10k pot here allows me to set the upper limit of the efie to a more precise
value. this is even more important when building a unit with new parts. it allows your to
fine tune the output. i will give the part number of the variable resistor below, if you
desire to do the same.
c3 in the manual is a large electrolytic capacitor. follow the specs in the manual, but
make sure it's rated for -40 to 105 c. i don't think you'll find one rated to 125 c, so you'll
have to settle for 105 c, which will do. i use a 220uf as i like the fact that it comes up to
voltage more quickly.
timer: ti tlc555qdr - digikey: 296-10341-6-nd (surface mount)
timer: ti tlc555ip - digikey: 296-1858-5-nd (8-pin dip)
9v voltage regulator: digikey: 497-4616-5-nd
 transformer: digikey: mt4207-nd
pcb mounted pot (r4): digikey: 490-2875-nd or 3296w-103lf-nd

other changes
the manual recommends that you build your project on a breadboard and get it working
properly before soldering it all together. i recommend you follow this advice. one of the
problems you may run into is not a high enough output voltage. if this occurs, you can
boost the voltage quite a bit by adding 2 more resistors to the 555 chip. add 390 ohms
across pins 7 & 8, and 15k across pins 6 & 7. you'll get a considerable boost in output
voltage.

summary
using the efie manual from eagle research, and the design modifications above, you can
create the most advanced unit of it's kind available anywhere. if you wish to buy your efie
pre-made, you can get them from our online store. both single efie and dual efie models
(for cars with 2 oxygen sensors) are available.

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