View attachment SSI protest against KDS - 2001.pdfView attachment US5507255.pdfView attachment US5729456.pdfView attachment US6009369.pdfView attachment US6148258.pdf
I always like a research challenge, so I went looking for the KDS EESS schematics, and was not able to come up with them specifically, but maybe what I found will be of interest. Looking at Google maps, it appears that the Troy MI location of KDS is now vacant. In 2004 KDS became part of Grand Haven Stamped Products - GHSP. GHSP has three Michigan locations, and appears to be thriving in the private sector. I can see how it might be that nobody at GHSP is interesting in digging into obsolete parts from a "legacy" company. Interestingly enough, one GHSP branch location is in Madison Heights MI, same as SSI.
It is interesting that the Nartron EESS yellow-sticker box has a Patent number but the KDS box does not. Nartron obtained a number of Patents for the various glowplug controllers, which I am attaching for reference. The Patents discuss the functionality and include various diagrams/schematics/timing diagrams, etc. I was not able to locate a KDS patent for this type of device. The KDS and Nartron yellow EESSs share the same NSN (6110-01-463-9260) so they both must satisfy the requirements/description for the NSN, but with all of the variations described in the patents it is easy to see how mixing EESS/GPC from different manufacturers could cause problems.
This is interesting too...in 2001 SSI filed a complaint with the GOA about the Govt awarding a large sole-source contract to KDS, because of issues with phantom starting (i.e. random cranking, catching on fire, draining batteries, etc.). The report is attached, and it describes a situation in which, at a particular point in time, out of three contractors only KDS was able to pass the AMG testing requirements. The report does not list the third company but I am guessing it was Nartron. If that is the case, then Nartron held a patent but seemingly was not capable of building/testing the box effectively at that time.
If I get some time I might take my Nartron box apart and see how it corresponds to the descriptions in the patents, but that won't be any time soon, unless it misbehaves! It would be great to reverse engineer this stuff, at least to be able to troubleshoot it better, especially the GPC so as to not replace the EESS unnecessarily.