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- Mar 6, 2008
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We've recently had pages and pages of arguments over who makes the ultimate ignition, with HEI fans and Mopar ignition fans yelling at each other endlessly and nothing being accomplished. So it's clear there is only one way to end these arguments: I am going to build the real ultimate ignition myself and demonstrate it.
This ignition tosses out the usual ignition coils in favor of a bank of high voltage capacitors that can charge from 60 to 120 kV. Instead of a distributor, each spark plug gets fed power from the capacitor bank through a krytron tube - these are one of the few devices that can switch this much voltage with accurate enough timing control.
The biggest problem is going to be getting parts. It already took a lot of talking to get the old Soviet era electronics package through customs, even though my source was careful to check them with a Geiger counter before sending them over. And Russia's cracking down on exports of that sort of thing. I had lined up a good source in China, but those corruption purges caught him selling missile fuel and filling them up with water. Once I get that solved and get them into production, I'll post up some dyno tests.
This ignition tosses out the usual ignition coils in favor of a bank of high voltage capacitors that can charge from 60 to 120 kV. Instead of a distributor, each spark plug gets fed power from the capacitor bank through a krytron tube - these are one of the few devices that can switch this much voltage with accurate enough timing control.
The biggest problem is going to be getting parts. It already took a lot of talking to get the old Soviet era electronics package through customs, even though my source was careful to check them with a Geiger counter before sending them over. And Russia's cracking down on exports of that sort of thing. I had lined up a good source in China, but those corruption purges caught him selling missile fuel and filling them up with water. Once I get that solved and get them into production, I'll post up some dyno tests.
