Is a way to bench test an igniton coil because I noticed some test with specs on the ohm meter but are not good when put on vehicle so can i connect it directly to the battery and try to ignite it to see how it responds to load?

 

I don't remember the values, but you can use an ohm-meter to check the resistances of the primary & secondary on the coil. The other thing to check is dielectric breakdown of the internal insulation. But most people don't have the equipment to check that.

 

The breakdown check is what I am refering to can I use a battery connected directly to the coil to check the output

 

You'll wanna check that with high voltage, since the secondary goes up to what, 30,000 volts or something? A meggar is vaguely like an ohm-meter, but it uses high voltages like that. It'll probably test OK with battery voltage, even if it breaks down at high voltage.

You can use the battery to operate the coil on the bench, but I'm not sure what that would prove. Maybe in the dark you'll see arcing which you wouldn't be able to see since it's under the distributor cap.

What's your car doing anyway? Why do you think the coil is bad? What about the ignitor?

 

here's a cool trick nobody knows about:

Just take a 9v battery and hook it up to coil primary (+) side. use a wire with a capacitor to connect the primary (-) terminal to the 9v (-) side. (You can get a capacitor from radio shack for like .25, or if you have an old school distributor laying around those have 'em on there).

put a spark plug on the coil secondary terminal (the one with the spring on it) hook a wire from it's threads to the battery (You'll need a medium sized aligator clip).

Take another wire and hook it to coil (-) and rapidly touch it against the 9v (-) side. You should see the spark plug fire.

This sounds really complicated, but it's cheaper than buying another coil!
if you need i'll draw you a picture in microsoft paint.

 

sugarloafpkwy

That is exactly what I was looking for. If you could, a schematic would be helpful but I think i got it. Also what do the specs on the capacitor need to be in uF and also should it be ceramic or electrolyte?

Thanks for the info