Coil recommendations

[Winston Teague]

You have been very lucky! Go and buy a lottery ticket! W

Elaborate.

They are a pettern part made to be priced competitively.

Use only genuine Bosch coils with condensers from Swiftune Racing.

W

[mycar]

A pettern ?

[chris68]

1. As far as I'm aware, these old style coils from Bosch are now coming out of a factory somewhere in South America and the in-service failure rates are dreadful. That's why some people are even trying to buy ancient Bosch units instead of the new ones. God knows how the dielectric will have deteriorated over the years of use.

2. There's nothing at all special about the ignition coils for our old cars. If your's is a Kettering style ignition, the coil is a high inductance 'flyback' style auto-transformer. If you have a ballast ignition, then it's essentially a 6V rated coil with internal resistance equivalent to the external ballast resistor. If you have CDI, the coil is a low inductance voltage transformer. They've all been used on countless types of cars.

3. Yes, you need a condenser to limit dv/dt across the points when they open. It's just an hv capacitor of about 0.2uF ish, nothing special there then. If you're smart, disconnect the condenser and wire the points so they trigger a transistorized ignition module. You'll be rid of the unreliable capacitor, the points will be happy because they're not having to interrupt inductive coil current and the ignition module will switch faster than the points could anyway. Everyone's a winner (except Errol Brown - RIP, sorry).

Sure, go and pay more for an unknown quantity from Swiftune. I'll stick with what I've got.

Chris

[Winston Teague]

My comments are/were based entirely on direct experience, not scientific knowledge. I agree there is nothing special or clever, but production quality control is VERY important and influential on the outcome, especially as both coils and condensers are supplied sealed.
Transistorised systems are also not 100% reliable, but failure is 'end of rally'. A points based system, using the best available components can be very good (also not 100%), and is fixable/bodgable with a few spares on board to get you home. I have seen dyno runs where a swiftune condenser/bosch blue produce more bhp than pattern (not pettern) lucas equivalents, back to back.
Good luck. W

[chris68]

I give in. Hooray for Swiftune .