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Bad coil bad coil


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Well the wifes 86 Turbo Wagon died in downtown Tacoma today. She needed to get to the Dr's, so I couldnt do much. When we got back, It still wouldnt start. Had juice and fuel, but not start. Took everyone home (20mi), and A.Savage showed up for his parts. Said he would take me back and help out. Well after fussing with it for an hour with no results, I decided to change the coil. I put this coil in 4 months ago, its a Accel Hi-Po. I was checking the wires to make sure they were tight and my fingers came back oily. Luckily I had another EA82T to rob some parts from (disty and coil). So I swapped the other coil in and it fired right up.

The old coil was still putting out spark, but it didnt look real hot, and the plugs were firing also. Alot of things made us think that the coil was not the culprit. Kind of pisses me off that a fairly new coil would do this:banghead:

I would also like to thank Al for his help today. A #1 guy.

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Check the manuals and find out what ohm resistance your stock coil is and find one with the same resistance. I ran across this with my Ford. I burned up one Mallory and two MSD distributors by not matching the right resistance coil. I believe (my Subaru anyway) that it uses a 1.2ohm resistence coil. Thats what I think burned up my Accel. It measured at 1.4ohms.

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I've used the big Accell coil for about 4 years. It was used when I got it. I put the same coil on the '85 and no problems to speak of. Sometimes you get what you pay for. Besides, I think the smaller coils may be for point type distributors and not for the electronic ones we have.

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1.2 ohm or 1.4 ohm; shouldn't make a difference. As a matter of fact, the higher resistance coil would draw less current and hence be less likely to fail. And coil resistance has nothing to do with the oil dripping out of the unit; bad sealing more likely. I'd take it back to get a refund and then apply it to an MSD is that's your choice.

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I had a SuperStock 8140 go bad before as well, during a time where I blew out 3 alts in 4 months. I put a new 8140 in and an xt6 alt, and fixed one wiring problem, and it has been fine ever since.

 

I went with the SuperCoil (big squarish looking one) for my 82. I have one on my turbo brat, and it's been there for a while, working fine....

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You have to remember a couple things about coils. The ones you guys are talking about are made for slow revving V8's mostly. I think if you look at some of them such as Crane PS92? they are good for higher revving motors. We had one on an Alfa Romeo. We used to run the Accel Super Coil, the big yellow brick, in Datsun 510 race cars. We had to use points in that series. Well, we had to run 2 ballast resistors, otherwise the points would go bad quickly.

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"You have to remember a couple things about coils. The ones you guys are talking about are made for slow revving V8's mostly."

 

If the coil is designed for a V8 that revs to 5000 rpm, thats 40000 sparks per minute (5000x8). For a 4 cyl to spark that much, it has to turn 10,000 rpm (10,000x4). So that shouldn't be an issue

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heh. that isn't going to happen!

 

something to think about.. unless you get a coil that was bad from the start, it's likely that the cause is due to the infamous old subaru grounding quality, or 20-25 year old wiring. adding a few extra grounds does wonders for old subarus!

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Well, the car is only 18yrs old. And I put a 18yr old coil back on:D It just seems lately that alot of people have been putting on the Accel 8140, and that some of them have been failing. There could be alot of things contributing to the failures, one of them being QC.

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Partsman got the RPM right, but the number of sparks per minute are kind of high.

 

Remember these are 4 stroke engines, they take 2 revolutions per cycle. A V8 will need 20,000 sparks /min at 5000 RPM, and a 4 banger will need 20,000 at 10,000 RPM.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I put an 8140 in my ride about 4 years ago, after researching ignition systems and the available coils out there. Seems a few bad ones have been sneaking out of the factory lately, but I still stand by the choice of the 8140 as a great upgrade, with the best direct compatibility with the factory ignition (ie: primary resistance, fits in the factory location). As stated somewhere else though, the chrome version does not seem to be as good a choice.

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