In the past 6 months i have had 3 ignitors fail. First was the standard one that comes in distributor king distributor and then 2 autozone ones.

I am posting this here because I i feel like its from the heat from the turbo. They have all worked fine till I took the car out on track days or during extended hard driving (cruises) when the exhaust temp gets high and the engine bay is heat soaked. Typically it gave me signs first with a bouncy tach.

It happened again on the track today on my last lap of a session when pulling hard in 3rd. The motor backfired, stalled and let out a big puff of black smoke. When I let out the clutch it started back up fine but with a bouncy tach.

Has anyone else experienced something like this? Is it just cheaply made parts? If that's your opinion what distributor/ignitor do you run?

 

I've cooked two oem coils from extreme heat. Both popped within 30 mins at temps of 300*F. But I never had igniter issues. Aftermarket igniters are garbage. I'd be more inclined to blame the quality over the heat. Put a temp probe on your dist and measure how hot it gets.

 

How much power are you making ? The more power you make the more strain on the stock system to create a good spark and kills ignitors

 

Just throwing out ideas but perhaps a small piece of tubing ducting air from under the bumper pointing directly on your distributor cooling it?

 

I tend to agree. Its not the heatsoak that's causing the problem, its the heat the ignitor/ICM assembly is generation from trying to give the car good enough spark for turbo. Sounds like the first ignitor was probably old, the others were of **** quality, and you're associating it with heatsoak when you shouldn't.

 

I cooked a coil over the summer from heat, also aftermarket, but ive never had an aftermarket ignitor fail yet. Supposedly the aftermarket ignites are "supposed" to weed out the flaws inherent with the old ignitors, with the bad circuit boards inside. Alot of the ignitors ive seen claim to have 1mm larger traces on the board and slightly better components as well, but i havent had one running long enough to test it against a OEM unit to see how long it lasts, so im kinda up in the air about their quality. If i see an oem unit in a distributor I always get the feeling its going to fail soon because of sheer age, and typically they always have. lol

 

More HP = More strain? I "hope" you just worded this wrong.

This even IF you have a theory, plenty of ignitors a fail on stock cars. With the type of wire bonding used vibration is just as likely of a cause as is heat.

 

Yes worded incorrectly

 

I just swapped mine to an Accell coil just for piece of mind.. I mean, the one one my 10-15 year old distrib was working fine, but for 50 bucks, it was worth the upgrade.

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/acc-11076

 

Can you explain then what you were implying? How more stress is put on the IGN ignitor?

 

Making 305 hp on 10 psi.

 

So do you only run OEM distributors/internals in your cars?

 

Do you see a trend?
Try OEM honda parts :-)

I have tons customers running oem ignition systems making 300-500 hp without issues.

 

It's a know fact with higher hp output comes more wear on everything. What I ment was what Mac already said. The ignitor is just a relay. Relays heat up. Add turbo heat and repeated higher rpm pulls back to back will drastically increase the heat inthe distributor and the ignitors don't hold up.

I had multiple ignitor issues. Switched to summit cdi box, crane coil and made an ignitor bypass and haven't had a single ignition problem since. Hence removing the failing part fixed my issue

 

The ignitor is not a "relay" it is a microprocessor board.

 

Basically a relay sorry I didn't know we're going to get all anally technical. It's powered and grounded and has rpm signal output it sends ground signal to the coil to fire. But essentially it's receives a signal and sends an amplified signal

 

basically a relay? how about nothing like a relay? what the hell is this forum coming to?

 

an ignitor is a microprocessor yes. What is a microprocessor ? It's a multipurpose, Programmable device that accepts digital data as input! Processes it according to instructions built into its memory, And provides results as output.

A microprocessor isn't a relay in the full sense of the word but if it repeatedly performs an action like an automotive ignitor does it's considered a relay sir. So what your saying is true and I agree but it's considered a relay in this instance.

 

Yes a transistor is similar to a mechanical relay, you still haven't explained where the wear or stress is coming from. Interesting that your building electronic parts and don't seem to have a grasp on how they operate.

 

Never said I was an electrical expert. Never went to school for electronics or any kind of engineering. I can build a electrical circuit because it's simple to follow a lay out and solder a circuit board. Not claiming it was my circuit design either. I stated that I was building them based on the circuit already designed.

I'm speaking out of my experiences with ignitors. Never used an aftermarket junk ignitor always Oem Honda and they all failed. Even went with different distributors in the past and still failing ignitors. Why? I can't full explain I'm not an electrical engineer. I'll leave it at that and you can all draw your own conclusions. Mine was heat or some sort of it being overworked I couldn't full explain as I don't know

 

Honest answer....

I'll do what I can later to explain why I was expressing my concerns on the stress comment (At WCF).

The Coil is stressed with more dwel and tighter gap not the ignitor.

 

I appreciate the response. Now why do the ignitors fail if the coil is being worked harder and not the ignitor

 

why do computer's fail? why do microprocessors have a shelf life of only 10 years? why do resistors go bad? why do capacitors fail over time? why does the earth orbit the sun? why does gravity make things go up and then come back down?

 

Lol this thread is full of win

Voltage surges can cause ignitor failure.
Damp envirornments cause premature life.
Tight air gaps on spark plugs (causing a short across the ignitor)
Broken or cracked electrodes ( causing a short to ground)

So if in a turbo app. Usually to fix "spark blow out" you run a tighte airr gap. At the same time your creating less resistance the high voltage has in the circuit causing a short leading to higher coil temps thus melting the insultation in the coil winding causing a short across the coil.

A relay is very diffrent than a transistor.
A relay is closer to being similar as a contactor.