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How Ignition Coils Work

An automotive ignition coil is nothing more than a transformer which has been designed and manufactured for a specific [dedicated] application.

It consists of two coils of transformer wire, arranged around a "soft iron" metal core.

The "Primary" winding is fed with 12 Volts DC from the vehicle battery. The "Secondary" winding [having MANY more turns of wire] is the "output" end of the transformer. The greater the difference in the number of "turns" between the two coils the greater the voltage output is increased.

The way an ignition coil works is that when the distributor "points" are closed, electrical current is allowed to flow through the Primary coil winding. This flow of current creates a magnetic field around the wire which is induced into the metal core.

When the points open, the flow of current is turned off, causing the magnetic field to "collapse." The collapsing magnetic field in the Primary winding and core "induce" a VERY high voltage current flow in the Secondary winding, which is then distributed to the proper spark plug by the rotor in the distributor.

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13y ago
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15y ago

Believe it or not, there is a coil of wire inside. Actually, there are two coils of wire. One has hundreds of times more wraps than the other and they are wound around a steel armature and cooled by oil that fills the space around them. The one coil with the fewer wraps is called the primary winding. When current is applied to the primary winding and then removed it creates a temporary magnetic field that induces current to flow in the secondary winding. Since there are many more wraps on the secondary, the voltage is increased from 12 volts on the primary to thousands of volts on the secondary. With that much voltage, the coil can create a spark that will jump several milimeters across the gap of the spark plug and ignite the fuel/air mix in the combustion chamber of the engine. The coil is a type of transformer. Since it increases voltage, it is called a step-up transformer.

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13y ago

The primary function of an ignition coil on an internal combustion engine is to furnish the high voltage required to jump the gap on a spark plug in an internal combustion engine, thus providing ignition of the air/fuel mixture in the combustion chamber.

It is a special form of transformer used to multiply the low voltage used in most vehicles (6 0r 12 volts) up to a much higher voltage, possibly as much as 50,000 volts or more.

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15y ago

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Q: How an ignition switch works?
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