Hello everybody. I just completed the Exhaust Back Pressure Valve brake mod last night on my PSD.
I've been a VW and Audi tech for 22 years and they in many cases use resisters to drop the voltage at certain things on the vehicles. Like fuel injectors and guages. Lot's of things have a reference voltage of 5v.
So I was concerned about the amount of voltage that Ford applies to the solinoid to activate the valve. I didn't want to burn out the coil in the solinoid. I checked the voltage at the plug and the grey/red wire is putting out 12 volts. Ok, this should be a walk in the park, just wire it up and I'm done.
Just for curiousity's sake I put my test light to the wire and found that there is 12 volts all the time whether the valve is activated or not. At all times the light appears to be blinking as if there is a pulse width modulated signal being sent to the solinoid. When it's off the light is blinking dimly. I couldn't find anything on my scanner that would produce a waveform. Just a flatline on the display. When it's on it's still blinking but just brighter. It appears to me that Ford designed it that way to keep the solinoid from overheating. So now I am thinking I should put a resister in the circuit to protect the solinoid coil. I didn't have time to measure the resistance of the coil last night as I was right down to the wire on time for a family gathering.
Has anyone found this before? Thoughts?

 

Any thoughts???

 

Just a lot of questions. I saw on a board recently that someone was wondering the same thing as you. I think he was thinking the voltage should be limited to 5v. as being tied to the backpressure sensor and the max voltage was something like 4.7 - 5.2.

I have my parts waiting on time to do it.

 

Yeah, I don't think that a full 12 volts is going to help the coil in the solinoid valve. I've installed the kit already and tested it for a few seconds and it works as advertized. Quite effective above 2500 rpm. Useless below 2000. A very effective anti-theft device as the motor refuses to develope any more than about 20% power.
What I would like to do is use one of those voltage stabilizer chips to output a steady xx volts. I just haven't decided on what is a good value to shoot for.