ignition coils

[1990LTD]

There's not a huge price disparity between the Motorcraft and generic bands. Well, the MC coil is 4x the price of the Standard Motor Products coil, but the difference is only around 30 bucks. Is there a big quality difference?


Do coils get weak with age? My limited understanding of their inner workings tells me yes, but I wanted to ask anyway.


Will they make weak spark or just stop making spark one day? Or both?

[GM_Guy]

Quality: Motorcraft unit is likely tested to tighter tolerances.

Age: I've never worried about it. I've got two junkyard HEI's still in service, one for 20+ years, the other at least 15+ years. If it gives a spark, and the engine spins over, and it has no difficulty starting, I'm good with it.

Both symptoms are possible. Weak spark usually due to the windings being compromised. Its a transformer, so unless you managed to apply so much voltage to it that it began to melt, there ain't much to go wrong otherwise.

Alex.

[1990LTD]

Recently my car has taken longer to crank, and I thought it was a somewhat long crank time to begin with. Starter spins as fast as the day it was installed.


I know it needs air/fuel/spark to run and I'm going through the possibilities.

[1990LTD]

how do you test the coil output? can you do it with a multimeter? trying to figure out if it's making weak spark or not. everything between the coil and combustion chamber is new so they're all ruled out.

[86VickyLX]

Recently my car has taken longer to crank, and I thought it was a somewhat long crank time to begin with. Starter spins as fast as the day it was installed.


I know it needs air/fuel/spark to run and I'm going through the possibilities.

What's long to you?

A spark tester will check the coil for you. One with an adjustable gap. If it can arc blue across a .030" gap, your coil is fine.