Coil On Plug....Can it really be this easy??....

[TC]

Would there be a way to convert the rotor in the cap to be a magnetic trigger.....You could have a special cap that instead of where the sparkplug wires go, you have a magnetic trigger at each post and as the rotor spins it triggers each post(trigger) and sends a signal to the corresponding coil to fire.........Squirrel you understanding this??....

Ya my mind works in mysterious ways......

But do you know how cool this could be, you could even still control the advance mechanically..........

[TheSilverBuick]

The pickup coil broken?


You'd have to replace each tab in the distributor cap with a winding where one end was grounded and the other went to a trigger, then make the tip of the rotor pretty magnetic to make it a VR system. Or you'd have to supply 12v and ground to each terminal and have a third wire be the signal to make a hall sensor. In either case it's adding an extra mechanical step (or 8..) in there somewhere.

[JeffMcKC]

like a magneto

[dieselgeek]

Would there be a way to convert the rotor in the cap to be a magnetic trigger.....You could have a special cap that instead of where the sparkplug wires go, you have a magnetic trigger at each post and as the rotor spins it triggers each post(trigger) and sends a signal to the corresponding coil to fire.........Squirrel you understanding this??....

Ya my mind works in mysterious ways......

But do you know how cool this could be, you could even still control the advance mechanically..........

congrats, you just reinvented the pickup coil

[min301]

congrats, you just reinvented the pickup coil

LOL

[TC]

I know you could use the pick up coil, but that would involve a separate box to control which coil is to be ignited.......What I'm talking about is a cap that actually has 8 individual switches that can send the activation signal to the coil, meaning you have one hot wire going into the cap and 8 exciter wires for each cylinder coming out.........If the rotor can be the magnetic trigger, then you can put a magnetic switch at each sparkplug terminal location, which means that every time the rotor passes the switch it would trigger the signal to the coil and fire it, its basically the same concept of firing the plugs with the conventional cap and rotor, but instead it would be sending a signal to the coils...........

[dieselgeek]

I know you could use the pick up coil, but that would involve a separate box to control which coil is to be ignited.......What I'm talking about is a cap that actually has 8 individual switches that can send the activation signal to the coil, meaning you have one hot wire going into the cap and 8 exciter wires for each cylinder coming out.........If the rotor can be the magnetic trigger, then you can put a magnetic switch at each sparkplug terminal location, which means that every time the rotor passes the switch it would trigger the signal to the coil and fire it, its basically the same concept of firing the plugs with the conventional cap and rotor, but instead it would be sending a signal to the coils...........

Sounds fun when you're bench racing about it, but the reality is - it's already been done and bypassed for a better design. THink about it: you need VR or Hall pickup sensors at EVERY tower location on the cap (whereas the pickup coil uses a SINGLE pickup). So you are at 8x the cost of a pickup coil already. Now, each of those VR or Hall pickups need transistorized circuits - 8 of them - to convert the magnetic signal into a useful trigger. Each of those needs to be "smart" and control dwell of each coil, just like a computer does, and this is based on RPM and load. So you need a brain (8 of them) that'll cost some serious bucks to develop.

Now, you need to still run power, grounds, to each coil - PLUS you are going to have "trigger" wires from the distributor. At this point, you have 8 different smart circuits triggering the coils, BUT you are required to use mechanical and/or vacuum advance to get any real timing control out of this design??? seriously??? We're up to about 8x the price of a megasquirt at this point, and a TON of failure points (didn't you complain about electronics complexity earlier??).

Meanwhile, what do you do about a Rev limiter? the individual triggers won't know the RPM the engine is running (unless you add significant bucks to the EIGHT computers already mounted in this distributor, sure hope you have firewall and hood clearance for this contraption). So now I have the world's most complicated ignition management system that does not give me a rev limiter, 2 step, or anything other than crappy mechanical/vacuum advance which will need adjusting every couple years...


sounds like an awesome idea, anyone care to invest in this? squirrel, are you understanding all of this? lol

[TC]

It was an idea and I'm sure someone smarter than me could make something in a compact size that could work.....I just thought it would be neat to be able to take your cap and rotor off your car replace it with the new cap and rotor and 8 coil packs.......Sure you'd still have the old style advance setup, but you'd still have a coil on plug ignition......Also, don't LS1 coils regulate the dwell within the coil??, I know when you look at the specs for the MSD LS1 coils they give a Dwell value.........Because in that case, all you'd need is the signal to ignite the coil and you wouldn't have to worry about a separate circuit controlling dwell times.......

And I know there is probably way more to doing this, but it would be a cool experiment to try..........