TastyBacon

I've been doing some reading about ignition coils and most of the information out there is several years old, so I'm just curious--what's everyone's favorite ignition coil these days for their boosted car?

If you vote, please post how much boost/HP you're making, too.

Turpid porpoise

Stock Ls1 coils for me, remote mounted with 8mm ignition cables. Hope to be making right around 1,000whp all said and done. Should be on the dyno in a couples months so Ill update then.

all4spl

The holley smart coils seem to be an awesome product

realcanuk

Running stick LS2 coils and making 1000 rwhp with no issues.

BLOWNBLUEZ06

The Holley smart coil is the Mercury Marine coil that everyone has rebranded under their own name and is the absolute best coil there ever was by a mile. My comment isn't just from testing in cars, but also from putting an O-Scope on it and comparing to a truck coil. The output voltage and current of these coils is in multiples of what any GM/Delco coil has ever put out. Look up IGN 1A or IGN1A and you'll find the best pricing. diyautotune has always had the best pricing when I've purchased them. Note that you'll need to run a 10ga wire close to the coils and then you can distribute short 14ga runs from that. It takes a 5-pin plug as opposed to the OEM 4-pin and you'll also need a 10ga ground bus for each bank of coils that goes to the back of its respective cylinder head. These coils are sensitive. If you set the dwell too high, they'll quit in a heartbeat, but no need to get even close to the max dwell. These coils are capable of supporting 60psi boosted cars making 3500hp. If these don't cut it, you're going to need a magneto.

Nobody making less than 1100whp needs to waste their time or money with these coils. The stock coils will light the fire just fine You can bump the dwell up a little and get a little more out of a stock coil too but you have to avoid saturation just the same as any other.

all4spl

So if I'm shooting for 1500, would you say they are required?

TastyBacon

Thanks everyone, this is confirming my suspicion that swapping out my stock LS1 coils with the D585s I have sitting on the shelf is a waste of time when I'll probably never make over 600HP on this 5.3L. Those little aluminum heatsinks look fancy though...

TastyBacon

Bumping this back up since it's been a while. I've been happily making 500ish HP in my car with an L33 on pump gas in the meantime, still running the stock coils that did over 160k miles on my LS1, but that's no surprise since I'm not pushing the limits (yeah, I know, 2003 called, they want their turbo C5 back). Still curious to hear whether stock LS1 coils are still doing it for the guys who are pushing the limits a little more, and/or running E85.

Podium

I make 800 plus on the ls2 \ls3 coils

stevieturbo

500ish HP is not pushing any limits, for any factory coil.

TastyBacon

I know. I only mention my car to make it clear that I'm not having any problems. I'm just curious whether anyone here:
1) Has had problems with factory coils' spark being too weak above a certain boost/HP level
2) Fixed their problems by upgrading to a different factory coil

stevieturbo

All factory coils can do 4 figures without any real difficulty.

helga203

My coils are stock(1999) with 140k on them. I've ran up to 30lbs of boost with no blow out or any miss fires at all. I just lowered my boost to 26lbs and could sit redline all day without issues. I'm over 1k rwhp.