Fooling around with ignition coils

A few mates and members of the Danish Triumph shared my interest in finding out - what is unside an ignition coil, and is there any significant difference in power output of traditional oilfilled coils vs modern dry coils

We made a simple test bench from an old distributor and a battery. Looked like this




Next step was to test the coils: an unipart coil, a lucas sports coild and a modern dry coil

The very scientific test was to experiment with how long a spark the coil could draw, and look at color and "fatness" of the spark.

In action it looked like this



There was no doubt that the modern coil supplied the longest and warmest spark. In second came the lucas sportscoil, but only marginally better than the Unipart coil. I doubt there would be any difference in car - at least not any that would justify the extra cost!

Now to the fun part - take the coils apart (boys will be boys...)













There was no big difference between the coils. The lucas coil had more windings, but basicly same construction.

Great way to spend an afternoon with good friends :-)