interesting. i have to imagine the optimal dwell settings for these will be a lot different than stock too given their internal dynamics.

 

always wondered if there was a coil set that was worth spending money on. i have a buddy that goes through a couple msd "high output" coils every summer, so ive always ruled them out.
in for results good luck man

 

Way better than a stock/truck coil. The problem with those coils is that if you run a hot tune-up in them, they have a protect circuit inside that will open them up.

Sorry for the delayed reply. I'm at PRI and answering posts via my phone is an absolute PITA.
Now I've got time to tell the long version in case you're interested.
Back in 2013, I was dealing with some issues on my car that had me stumped. I called Mike Moran and asked him for his thoughts. He doesn't have a ton of experience with Haltech, but knew a guy that had an issue similar to mine and told me to call him. He's a Promod bike racer running both a ton of cylinder pressure and RPM. He was struggling with spark blow out. He tried all the igniter coils out there, the truck coils, the MSD's and so on. No luck. He began bench testing coils with an oscilloscope, turning up the dwell until saturation, confirming that he was as hot as he could get. Someone gave him the hot tip on the IGN 1a coil and he threw it on the bench. It surprised him to see how much more output was coming out of that coil when he began leaning on it. He put it on the bike and after an entire season of massive frustration, the problem was gone. He was able to get the bike all the way down the track without any issues.
A year later at a Haltech seminar the Australian engineer/instructor was talking about dwell settings. He pulled out a little box that he used to test coils and it had an o-scope to view the output trace. He tested a truck coil and I mentioned my opinion on the coil and asked if he had heard of the IGN 1a. He said "no". I told him what a wicked little coil it was and I felt like his response was one where he felt that I was basing my opinion on the internet. His response was a short one in his Aussie voice...."prove it!". I told him, "no worries, I'll bring it tomorrow and we can light it up". The next day, I brought the coil. He still seemed to have a lack of trust. I wired it up, we turned on the scope and we started with the settings he was running the truck coil the day before. The output was close to the same. I told him to turn up the dwell. The result was a waveform amplitude that he had never seen before. With a puzzled look on his face, he walked over to the his testing box and increased the dwell time, began the test and we were now over double the output of the truck coil. He asked for permission to increase the dwell more and I agreed. The coil still responded with a full wave signal, showing no saturation. He paused and quietly said.......wow......that's impressive. We never took it to the end of it's capability that day, but it was certainly enough to know that it had the cajones I had been told it had.


I know that the coil will produce an increased voltage and current. My opinion is that the only significant horsepower gains will result from curing problems with spark blow-out, so if you have no spark blow-out, there aren't any significant power gains to be had.
I am confident that the gaps can be opened up significantly without worrying about losing spark and that better driveability can be had at lighter loads and engine speeds as a result.

If you could use any guidance with dwell settings, let me know. I think I have some good documentation stored on them somewhere in my tuning PC.


The IGN 1a is a great coil. They're bad ***, but they cannot deal with saturation well at all. It's important to do your homework on the dwell settings because if you over cook them, these coils will burn up. If you leave the settings stock, you won't get much more, if any more out of them. Gotta find that middle ground. A hair under that saturation point would be optimal for a hot tune up. I've read that the sweet spot with these coils is 5-5.5 milliseconds and that if you avoid anything above 7.5ms, you'll never have a problem with them.
The best pricing I've ever found on these is at DIYautotune.com. There are a ton of companies rebranding them, but they have a familiar enough look to know that's what they are.

https://www.diyautotune.com/product/ign-1a-race-coil/

It's important to know that your GM coil plugs will not fit these coils, so you'll need to get the plug kits or make sure they're included. These are 5 pin coils that have 2 grounds. If you get these, I would recommend running at least a fused 10ga wire off the back of the alternator, to a good quality relay such as Tyco and then out to split out into 2-14gauge wires, one for each bank of coils.



The last thing that I'll share about these coils is that if you ever need to put a battery charger on high, on your car, you should pull the fuse before doing so. "start" mode on the chargers runs really high voltage and anything over 16.9 volts can easily smoke these coils.


Thanks,

Bret

 

Kit I got comes with all new plugs/wiring/etc.

I'll hit you up for dwell stuff once I get them on.

 

Excited for results!

 

I fitted them to my own car earlier in the year, replacing the 514's

I've never had any spark issues before even up to 28/29psi boost....so really hard to say. But I honestly didnt notice any difference with the 1A's

That isnt to say they arent better....just in my case no difference. But then I wasnt having any problems in the first place.

Also fitted a set to a friends 4cyl car at the same time. Again it was on OEM coils and had been fine even at 35psi boost but as we wanted to try most boost reckoned may as well try better coils. We run that car up to 45psi boost with no issues.

 

Pretty much what I expect. No issues before, no issues after. Maybe better idle/etc.

 

At PRI today and met the great Patrick Barnhill while at the Haltech booth. The IGN-1A is on display and we were discussing it. Those coils are on a Haltech controlled car that he tunes that ran 3.80@211 in the 1/8th mi recently.

True Story.

 

There is no doubt they have been used on some very very fast cars, and have been for a few years.

I just decided I wanted a change, and if nothing else it is peace of mind that they are one of the best coils out there, for not a huge amount of money.

 

Exactly. I had 2 damaged OEM coils, and was going to spend $250ish for new OEM, so being a semi-dumb vette owner, figured why not spend 3x as much. Merry x-mas to me.

 

1st world problems !!!

Merry X-mass ! Lol

 

 

Sadly its typical, but at least I admit it.

 

Christian

 

Yep, thats pretty much what I got. Only difference is he sent me just new ends for the wires instead of new wires.

 

 

I just bought the coils from AEM ( UK supplier had stock at a decent price ), figured it was as handy to buy the Holley coil harness for them instead of mucking about with my own.
I used some cheapo Airtex leads for a Ford Explorer or something that had the same plug boots as the Firecore above and cut/crimped to suit the length I needed.

I had tried to get Firecore leads ( my old leads were Firecore but too short for where I needed to move teh new coils to ), but never got any emails back from them at the time and didnt have time to mess about. I may change further down the line but the current setup is working fine.

the Firecores seem to be very low resistance, whereas the Airtex ones I used seem to be around 6kohm I think it was after I cut them to the length I needed.

How much that matters or makes a difference I've no idea.

 

Made brackets, made the wires, and got them all done on passenger side. Still got to do drivers side. Fired right up with 1/2 done.

 

Nice bling !

 

Just wait until you see my new donkey dong intake.