Rather OT - Volvo HT coils

Didn't Saab lead the way with these on the 1980s?

Tom

Tom wrote

Dunno Tom, never had a thing to do with Saabs - wouldn't surprise me though, they are a go-ahead lot in Sweden ;o))

Regards,

Kim

I think it was GM, and Saab got it from them.

They were certainly around in '83 - I had them on my Renault 17 engine (an 843 ? Much the same as the Lotus Europa, but with Bosch injection), as part of a slightly dubious home-brew digitally mapped ignition system based on single CMOS chips and an EPROM with the map in it.

A later version appeared on my Lancia Montecarlo with the silly compression pistons. I had to tweak the map before thrashing it, or else the plugs melted. Had to use platinums to get it to work right in the end.

Yes, they had the first setup for a commercial car with separate coils for each cylinder and no distributor.

Peter

My sister has a Ford Scorpio Estate, they also use this system. You're right about the 'hard, hot life'. Although the plug/coil seems to be OK, Ford, in their infinite wisdom used cheap pvc LT cables which run across the top of the engine under a trendy looking cover which must mean that they run at about 100 deg. C or more!. The wires lasted about 20K miles before they melted and perished causing mis-firing and/or total failure. Ford *claimed* this was unheard of before and wanted about £200 to replace the loom. I rewired the thing with PTFE wires for a couple of quid and all has been well since.

Regards

Mark