Sunday, December 5, 2010

Ignition problems before I start?

After thinking about my ignition plans for a while I started wondering if the coils were actually up to the task. Not their output abilities but their ability to fire as often as I need. In the original setup the LS series coils fire only once per power cycle, only on the power stroke. In a waste spark setup the coils fire on the power stroke and on the exhaust stroke. So if the maximum RPM that the coils could handle on the original setup is 6600 RPM, then in a waste spark setup they would top out at 3300 RPM. So assuming my assumptions are correct the LS coils will either overheat or output will taper off above 3500. Next idea was to use an ignition coil off of a Dodge 5.8 non hemi engine. The older style coil is designed to fire every pulse of a v-8. So at 6600 RPM that coil will fire 26,400 times were the LS coil will only fire 3300. But the output of the dodge coils is noticeably less, possibly less than the original waste spark coils, but they will run cooler than they would in the v-8 and I can run shorter ignition wires to the plugs for less resistance. So maybe I should just keep the original ignition.