Distributor VS Wasted Spark VS Coil on Plug VS MONSTER Coil near Plug

so today we'll be comparing four different kinds of ignition systems a distributor based system a wasted spark one a coil over plug and a monster coilover plug and we're starting with the oldest and most primitive system in the bunch the distributor based system of course now unlike any of the other ignition systems here today the distributor is mechanical it is directly mechanically connected to engine internals in many cases it's driven by the camshaft as you can see here a gear on the camshaft turns a gear on the distributor shaft which turns the rotor inside the distributor but the system doesn't need to be gear-based and it can be driven directly by the back of the camshaft or any other means which ensure that the distributor is mechanically synced the rotation of the engine now this is very important because when the engine starts spinning faster so too does the distributor and this ensures proper spark timing as the rotor inside the distributor turns it comes very near contact points inside the distributor cap and current arcs or jumps from the rotor to the cap and from there going through the spark plug wire all the way to the spark plug at the spark plug end the voltage must be high enough for the current to arc from the main to the ground electrode of the spark plug it must overcome the insulating properties of air and fuel present in the spark pod gap now for this to happen we need a lot of voltage now voltage is essentially a difference in potential between two points but it can also be explained and visualized as a force or the pressure that is being exerted onto the electrons or the electrical current forcing it to fall and to overcome any insulation even that of air and fuel a lot of voltage is needed typically around 20 000 volts are needed for the spark plug to arc to create an actual spark now we know that a car battery supplies around 12 volts so where the heck does 20 000 volts come from well increasing the voltage coming from the battery is the job of this guy and this is the igniter aka ignition coil now inside every ignition coil there are three main components an iron core a primary winding and a secondary winding now when voltage comes into the primary winding it turns the iron core into a strong electromagnet and the lines of a magnetic force surround the iron core and they also envelop the secondary winding now what happens next is that voltage is switched off to the ignition coil this is done either by a contact breaker the ecu or an ignition module and when this happens the magnetic field collapses and the lines of magnetic force start quickly rushing back to the iron core as they do this they push along the electrons in the secondary winding they dramatically increase the voltage and they push the current along with great force or pressure to the spark plug creating a spark now to generate this magnetic field the ignition coil of course needs time now objectively doesn't need a lot of time the ignition coil is pretty fast at generating magnetic fields but the problem is that it has very little time to do what it needs to do a inline four-cylinder engine spinning at 6000 rpm has 5 milliseconds between two spark events a v8 engine at 6000 rpm has two and a half milliseconds between two spark events to put this into perspective the average human blink takes 400 milliseconds and this very short time frame for the ignition coil to create a spark to raise the voltage is actually a big problem and at high rpms the time frame becomes so short that the ignition coil cannot generate sufficient voltage and it's forced to fire the spark plug to send out the voltage before peak voltage is reached and this of course leads to a weaker spark plug or even at higher rpms it leads to a lower chance of the spark even happening and this is why single coil distributor based systems are often prone to misfires at high rpm and they're also a strong limiting factor if you want to modify your engine and raise its red line but this isn't the biggest issue with the distributor-based system by today's standards this is a pretty obsolete system and it holds many disadvantages and pretty much zero advantages over any of the systems we'll be covering in this video now one of the first disadvantages is of course added friction this thing adds moving parts to your engine and this adds friction and of course you don't want that also because the lower part of the distributor shaft is immersed into the engine it's connected with engine internals it needs to seal away oil and this means that it's basically an oil leak waiting to happen on top of this it's pretty bulky and it has these very long spark plug wires now spark plug wires are extremely conductive but they still cause a certain voltage drop over their length the longer the spark per wire the larger the voltage drop and often different cylinders have a different spark plug wire length for example cylinder one usually has the shortest spark plug wire and cylinder 4 has the longest one which means that they ultimately don't receive the exact same amount of voltage but this isn't a big issue the bigger issue is that spark plug wires erode over time they fail and when they fail they can cause a spark to jump from wire to wire and this will cause your engine to run very very poorly the distributor cap is also a service item and you need to replace this from time to time because the points in the distributor cap wear out and again this will cause your engine to run poorly as well [Music] meet the wasted spark setup now this thing is really nice because it compresses the distributor and the igniter into a much smaller much more compact much more elegant package and what's most important there's no gears no friction no oil seals none of that but wait if it's not mechanically synced to the engine how does it know the speed of the engine how does it handle ignition timing well behold the crankshaft position sensor it may look very simple and humble but it's absolutely vital to the operation of the coil pack now inside the crankshaft position sensor we can find a magnet and the crankshaft position sensor reads something called a trigger wheel the trigger wheel is usually attached to some sort of pulley on the crankshaft as the crankshaft rotates so too does the pulley and the trigger wheel on the trigger wheel you're usually going to find one or two missing teeth the missing feet create a change in the magnetic field and this change is sensed by the crankshaft position sensor because it has a magnet inside and based on this it knows the position of the engine and then it relays the position of the engine to the engine's ecu so that the ecu can tell the coil pack which is this thing when to fire the spark plug but there's more benefits inside this thing although it's much smaller and much more compact than a single ignition coil distributor based system the coil pack actually has two ignition coils inside it and we can divide the coil pack into side a and side b one ignition coil in a coil pack always fires two cylinders at the same time so for example in a four cylinder engine side a of the coil pack is going to fire cylinders one and four and side b of the coil pack is going to fire cylinders two and three if you have a six cylinder engine you're gonna need a coil pack that looks like this if you have a v8 you're gonna need two coil packs with a total of four ignition coils so that each ignition coil can fire two sounders so wait if the coil pack always fires two cylinders at the same time does this also mean that it creates two combustion events no of course not for example in a four cylinder engine when cylinder one is in its compression stroke cylinder number four is in its exhaust stroke which means there's no air and fuel to combust which means that the spark created in cylinder number four is essentially wasted it does nothing and this is why this system is called the wasted spark system but the important thing is that inside a coil pack every ignition coil only has to handle two cylinders in our previous distributor based single ignition coil setup the ignition coil had to fire twice for every single revolution of the crankshaft in a four-cylinder engine it had to fire four times for every single revolution of the crankshaft of a v8 engine for example compared to this the ignition coils inside a coil pack always have to fire only once for every single revolution of the crankshaft regardless of the number of the cylinders of the engine because every ignition coil always handles only two cylinders and this is good because it has to fire as often the ignition coils inside the coil pack have more time to recharge because they have more time to recharge they can produce more voltage even at higher rpms leading to better and more reliable operation and spark at high rpms so the wasted spark system is infinitely better than a distributor system it's more reliable it's more accurate it has more voltage at higher rpms you know it's also operated by the ecu so these you can compensate for various factors so what more could you ask for well we can always do one better and one better in this case is the coil on plug or the direct ignition setup now the coil one plug or cop system has all the advantages of the wasted spark coil pack based system but on top of this it has some key benefits now just like the wasted spark system the cop system relies on a crankshaft and or camshaft position sensor for ignition timing which means that it's very very accurate just like the wasted spark system but unlike the wasted spark system in the case of the cop each spark plug or each cylinder gets its own ignition coil now if we recall the ignition coils from our previous setup every ignition coil inside the coil pack has to fire once for every single revolution of the crankshaft in the cop setup every ignition coil has to fire once for every other revolution of the crankshaft meaning even more time to recharge and even more voltage at higher rpms leading to even better operation at higher rpms and the potential for an even higher engine red line another key benefit of the cop setup is that no two cylinders are paired together like in the wasted spark setup with the cop every cylinder gets its own ignition coil and this gives the ecu the opportunity to individually control ignition timing for every cylinder and if the ecu is advanced enough if it has enough sensors to do this properly this can lead to a smaller running engine a better idle better mpg lower emissions and even more power direct ignition also means that there's zero spark plug wires our previous coil pack based setup still relied on spark plug wires to get the spark to the engine and because all the ignition coils in a wasted spark coil pack are concentrated in a single item in the engine bay this led to relatively long spark plug wires so we had a bit of a voltage drop due to the wire's length and we had a bit of a voltage difference between different cylinders because different cylinders ended up having different lengths of spark plug wires also we have a service item that we have to replace from time to time because spark plug wires erode over time with aclp there's none of that because there's no spark plug wires so when it comes to the cop i really again have to ask the question what more could we ask for well in this day and age with a mostly stock engine we really can't ask for much more this thing is really really good but what happens when you start to significantly modify your engine when you start doubling or even tripling its original power output well in that case you have to reach for something like this now this is the aem smart coil and it's designed to be a major upgrade over wasted spark setups or even distributor-based setups of course but it's even an upgrade over oem coil unplug setups now modern oem cop setups are really good honestly they're capable of delivering quite a bit of voltage even at pretty high rpms but of course all oem setups are designed to run within the parameters of the stock engine car and engine manufacturers aren't crazy of course they aren't going to waste money by designing parts that deliver more than they need to and when you start asking from the engine a lot more than it was originally capable of delivering then you're gonna need stuff like this a typical scenario where you might want one of these monster coils is when you add forced induction to the engine or significantly increase the boost of your engine if we recall the beginning of our video we're going to remember that to generate a spark the spark plug needs a lot of voltage because it needs to overcome the insulating properties of air and fuel so what happens when you stuff in more air and more fuel as you increase boost to the engine of course there's more insulation that needs to be overcome by the spark plug which means more voltage and this thing generates 40 000 volts which ensures that there's gonna be a spark happening reliably no matter how much boost you're trying to stuff into that cylinder another scenario where you want one of these is when you want to rev really high when you start demanding 10k rpm from an engine that previously did six and a half krpm then the stock cop setup is going to start to run out of time but not this thing one of the reasons that you can do 10k rpm with a monster coil like this is that this one uses igbts now igbt stands for insulated gate by poor transistor without boring you with too much electronic speak what you have to know about igbts is that they combine very high efficiency with very very fast switching and this is one of the reasons why 10k rpm with this thing no problem another area where stock cop setups often run out of steam is spark duration and that's because increasing spark duration on a stock engine really won't yield any benefits now to create the spark you need voltage but once the spark happens voltage isn't as important to maintain the spark you need current flow or amperage and this is where this thing really shines because it has as you can see some very big very large beefy coils with many many windings this thing doesn't just provide voltage it also provides a lot of amperage and although increasing spark duration a stock engine isn't needed if you significantly modify your engine spark duration can be really important and can really help unlock the full potential of the engine and can even help you idle nicer and cleaner now the only real downside of this thing might be that it uses spark plug wires but because this is a coil near plug setup it means that the spark plug wires are going to be extremely short and are all going to be of equal length which means that voltage drop or voltage difference pretty much don't exist the only thing you have to do is replace the spark plug wires from time to time but that's a small price to be paid when you remember that it's pretty easy to mount these things on your engine because it's a coil near plug and it doesn't require complicated and often expensive adapter plates like many coil unplug setups do and there you have it we pretty much covered the evolution of the modern ignition system from the primitive and bulky to the sleek and powerful to the monstrous give me all the boost you got yeah that's pretty much it for today's video i hope you enjoyed it and found it useful and informative i also hope it helps you better understand the benefits of different ignition systems as always thanks a lot for watching i'll be seeing you soon with more fun and useful stuff on the d4a channel you

Channel: driving 4 answers

Views: 502,736

Keywords: distributor, wasted spark, coil on plug, wasted spark ignition explained, wasted spark ignition, coil on plug conversion, coil on plug ignition system, coil on plug vs distributor, coil on plug vs coil pack, coil on plug vs coil near plug, aem smart coils, ignition coil, distributor ignition, ignition system, ignition system explained, coil on plug explained, ignition advance, ignition timing, wasted spark vs coil on plug

Id: L_hx8I6GzyU

Length: 16min 55sec (1015 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020