MTFCA Forum

Coils drift with usage, humidity and temperature cycling. You may be missing out on better engine performance. Test and tune your coils regularly for best engine performance.

By this time, after 15 years or so availability of the ECCT tester, there should be someone within reasonable distance of every MTFCA chapter to call upon for coil check/recalibration. If not, chapters could bring up collections to purchase the ECCT for chapter use for all members..... JMHO. !,,.......... And, yes, at 10 PM, I know my " children " coils are sparking equally on time and enjoying the ride !

What is your recommendation for adjusting coils to work with an E-Timer installed? I expect that removing and reinstalling the fused jumper would change point settings. But, is that not a concern with an E-Timer?

A primary benefit of the E-Timer is superior ignition performance with zero maintenance. That includes eliminating periodic coil point adjustment and point replacement achieved by bypassing the coil points with tiny fuse jumpers. The coil points continue to buzz but operation is purely cosmetic as the E-Timer charges and fires the coils precisely synchronized with piston position.

Coils with fuse jumpers installed cannot be used with stock timers unless the fuse jumpers are removed. Removing fuse jumpers will alter coil point adjustment so degraded engine performance can be expected using a stock timer unless all 4 Coils are adjusted for equal and consistent firing time.

Mark Nunn wrote: ↑

Tue Aug 13, 2024 1:05 pm

What is your recommendation for adjusting coils to work with an E-Timer installed? I expect that removing and reinstalling the fused jumper would change point settings. But, is that not a concern with an E-Timer?

I do run my E-Timer with the points active (i.e. no jumpers), and in that regard I've set my coils as I would with a mechanical timer (each to fire at 3.5ms on 6V or 2ms at 12V). I have also set up a friend's car the same way. Performance of the car is identical to with the points jumpered out, but has the advantage of not having to even open the coil box if I wish to reinstall the mechanical timer. In effect the E-Timer is just a drop in replacement with nothing else needing to be changed or adjusted. And, the coil will buzz normally if one of the timer wires is shorted under fault conditions.
The important thing is the coils are set on an ECCT or other instrument which measures actual coil firing time, otherwise I'd recommend the use of the coil jumpers.