How to Test an Ignition Coil Pack - Best Testing Procedure

hey how's it going do-it-yourselfers today moisture hey can test your ignition coil pack alright so first thing you wanna do when you speak the problem with your coil pack is to do a close visual inspection of the housing of your cold packs because a lot of times due to the heat from your engine you start developing cracks on the plastic housing of your ignition coils and then when you get cracks on these coils the spark that comes out of these coils is going to short - maybe the coil next to it or some other engine component so you want to thoroughly and visually inspect these ignition coils and look for any cracks or darkened or burn marks on the plastic housing alright so first we're going to check the resistance for our primary and secondary coils of our ignition coil pack as you can see this is a quote pack for a four-cylinder engine if you had an engine with six cylinders you would have another one here controlling two more cylinders if you had a 8 cylinder engine you would have a another one and so on and so forth and then inside each coil you have one primary coil and then you have a secondary coil where the spark comes out of that goes to your spark plugs you can check the resistance of the secondary coil right here at these points but the primary coil is inside here and you can only check it by the connector now the quick way to figure out which pin is which is to get in your car turn the key to the on position that's one before you start the car and then you get grab your multimeter put it on DC voltage ground your black test lead and then on the connector side you start checking for voltage and the one that gives you 12 volts the corresponding pin on your ignition coil is going to be your common pin so next we can test the resistance or our primary circuit so we get our multimeter and we're going to put it on 200 ohms success the next setting after what all reading we are expecting from our primary circuit which it should be about only one ohm so unless we get one hour test lead and we're going to put it on our common pin and then we're going to get the other one and put it on the one next to it and as you can see we got one point zero ohms for this primary circuit and next we just switch over to the other pin and check our second coil and on that one we got 1.0 1.1 and that's about right - next we're going to check the resistance for our secondary coil which on this ignition coil pack should be about 13,000 ohms so we go to our multimeter and we go to the to the next setting that's about 13,000 which is going to be 20,000 homes here then we grab our test leads and touch the ends and you can see we got twelve point eight six kilo ohms where other words twelve thousand eight hundred and fifty or sixty ohms same thing on this side on this side we got twelve point seven two kilo ohms or twelve thousand seven hundred and twenty ohms and those resistance readings were well within the margin of error so as far as resistance goes this quote pack is good not this thing you're issuing cold packs for resistance is okay but if you want to be 100% sure you need to test the ignition quote back on the car and basically make sure there's actually spark coming out of your kitchen coil pack and what you'll need to do this is a spare spot tub and a rubber hose about five or six inches long and diameter like this that's going to fit over your spark plug so next you just screw it onto onto your spark plug and then you would put this on your ignition coils and if you're getting no spark at any of your spark plugs it doesn't matter which one you put this over but if you're for example diagnosing a misfire at Southern number four then that's the one you put this over now you could also obviously use a spark plug wire but then if you don't get any spark at this end you need to remove the spark plug plug wire and then put the spark plug with a rubber hose over this in order to rule out a bad spot plug wire next you'll need to ground your spark plug so get your jumper cables put one on the base of your spark plug and the other one on the negative post for your battery next we're going to disable the fuel pump so we don't have unburned fuel going through our engine and we do that by first locating the relay or fuse for a fuel pump and then simply removing it now this is obviously not the ignition coil pack for this car that's only because this Court does not have an ignition coil pack and I didn't want to confuse you guys and this case it only has a one ignition coil which supplies spark for all six cylinders and that's because the ignition system on this car has a distributor which is in the back there somewhere yeah where you guys probably can't see but nonetheless this ignition coil works the same so I'm going to show it to you on this ignition coil so I'm just going to remove this wire and then attach our spark plug with the rubber tubing and then we ground our spark plug next we're going to crank the engine and then we should have spark here just make sure you keep your hand away from this because you could get zapped that's not going to be pleasant all right grease yourself we're getting spark at our ignition coil therefore we can say that our ignition coil is okay and in fact our ignition system all the way from our ignition switch all the way to our ignition coil is working fine but if you're not getting spark there's one more thing you need to check out before you condemn the ignition code for sure and that is you want to make sure that constant tow bolt is being supplied to our ignition coil pack and also that we have a switching signal being turned on and off so for this one again we have one constant 12 volts and then we have two switching signals being sent for each ignition coil on this SSU all we have one ignition coil here this connector is going to have two wires one of them is going to be a constant 12 volts and the other one's going to be a switching signal and the way you should test these is to back problem with some paper clips and test them with the connector on the ignition coil obviously so again if you were doing it on this you have one constant to switching signals if it was a v6 you would have three switching signals if it's a v8 4 and add to that you could possibly have a grounding wire going to this as well if you have a ground wire just test and make sure it's it's got no resistance to ground with the key and the on or a cranking position depending on your car is making mode and the best tool to use for this is going to be a test light so first again we'll ground our test light and then with the engine cranking I want back from these and the one that stays where our test light stays on that's going to be our constant obviously and the other one would have to be our switching signal or in other words we're gonna see our test light go on and off rapidly all right so that was our constants and now we're going to switch over to the other one and make sure we got a switching signal that's it so if you're not getting spark out of your ignition coil but you have both a constant variable to supply to and the switching signal then you're shortly on the result of that then you have a bad ignition coil but just make sure you trim that rubber hose that goes between your spark plug and the ignition coil so that the spark plug on the ignition coil are pretty close if they're too far out the spark or the charge is not going to jump and create a spark at this workbook and then you might get a false suite also by following this procedure you can kind of figure out whether you have a bad spark plug wire as well that is if you're getting spark at the ignition coil and then you add the spark plug wire itself and then put your spark at the end of the wire and test it and then if you're not getting spark then that means the wire that you just added is bad but if you're diagnosing an intermittent misfire and you just pick the spark plug wire there's other tests you should do to figure whether you're the best part plug wire or not and I'll put those tests in a video and I'll put the link to that video and on this side of screamer you can click on it also put some other related videos on the screen where you can check them out and we that's it hope this video helped you out there if you like this with you this is your thumbs up subscribe if you want to see more like it I'll see you next time thanks for watching you

Channel: Ratchets And Wrenches

Views: 1,687,899

Keywords: Ratchetsand wrenches, ignition coil pack, ignition coil, how to test an ignition coil, resistance, multimeter, spark, test ignition coil, ignition coil test, coil testing, ignition coils, ohm, Ignition System (Invention), how to diagnose a no spark condition, crank no spark, engine won't run, ignition problems, how to remove an ignition that doesn't turn, fixing an engine that won't run, honda, toyota, ford, dodge, bmw, mercedes-benz, chevy, nissan, civic, accord, ignition coil replacement

Id: XcmWa2Bt12U

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 01 2015