True Coil Tester

Now THAT'S cool.
steve

Nice opto-isolator!

kzgeoff wrote: Nice opto-isolator!

I figured you'd like that.

When I was in engineering school, we had a coil test jig that also put a mock up spark plug in a pressurized chamber with a quartz glass lens for viewing, while that plug was under a 140psi pressure.

Can u send me a parts list for that please. R

The schematic for the first tester is posted.

I'm still finalizing notes and drawings for the second tester (which is more stable than the HEI based one). But I'll post it on my site when it's done. I'll put a link to it here when it's up.

The musical one requires some experience with microcontrollers, so there's software etc. related to that. You would want to get yourself familiar with the Arduino microcontroller development environment and hardware. Once you have that down, it's pretty simple.

I have a brother that's a CS engineer and one that's an EE. Figure one of them would help out. Ya got.any ideas on my new project POS? R

Here is an updated version.

This version uses more parts, but is far more stable and predictable. It also allows for a wider range of coils to be tested safely (reducing heat stress).

It also does not use an HEI module since they are now no longer made the same. (Different brands of HEI modules, and even the same brand made at different times, behave differently now).

gpzweb.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.co...ilTesterIgbt555.html

EDIT: Reposted this to fix the youtube link. I don't know why it became unavailable.

Here is an updated version.

This version uses more parts, but is far more stable and predictable. It also allows for a wider range of coils to be tested safely (reducing heat stress).

It also does not use an HEI module since they are now no longer made the same. (Different brands of HEI modules, and even the same brand made at different times, behave differently now).

gpzweb.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.co...ilTesterIgbt555.html

The coil test procedure in the manuals seems like a blunt instrument to me, will sometimes confirm a duff one but not really certain.
As above coils often become intermittent rather than totally failing.

Do you think a 1000V 'stress test' with a megger would show a duff coil?

(Used for testing domestic and commercial wiring - will also measure disconnection times for RCD and MCB's , ground loop impedences etc)

1000v on the primary might damage the coil. The primary side usually sees up to about 600v, but could be as little as 300v. In use, the spark plug gap and cyclinder pressure determine what the final secondary voltage, and thus the final primary voltage, will be. It's usually around a 100:1 ratio.

1000v, would then be inadequate to test the secondary.

As you pointed out, illustrated by the earlier video, the coils can fail gradually, so other basic tests won't really tell you the whole story.