coil hunting

[raburgeson]

I been looking and hope someone knows of a better deal, so far I've found 60 KV
ignition coils at J C Whitney for 26.95. If you get 2 and hook the primary bassackwards
on one you get a neg. 60k for the skirt , and the other one can drive the cathode,
120kv, yay. Has anyone found or know of a better deal? Will 446 opposing miliamps,
223 on each coil be too much?If we go big is there a large inrush current to consider?
Does anyone have any info on Ken Rands construction techniques , I hear his plane was
very light and strong (home built aircraft way back in the past) I,m Just full of stupid
questions this morning isn't it great. 

[Sojourner]

Most "pull it yourself' junk yards usually part with coils for about 4 bucks in my area. At this price, you could rip some open and have fun ruining....er...experimenting with them.

=)

Soj

I been looking and hope someone knows of a better deal, so far I've found 60 KV
ignition coils at J C Whitney for 26.95. If you get 2 and hook the primary bassackwards
on one you get a neg. 60k for the skirt , and the other one can drive the cathode,
120kv, yay. Has anyone found or know of a better deal? Will 446 opposing miliamps,
223 on each coil be too much?If we go big is there a large inrush current to consider?
Does anyone have any info on Ken Rands construction techniques , I hear his plane was
very light and strong (home built aircraft way back in the past) I,m Just full of stupid
questions this morning isn't it great. 

[raburgeson]

Yes I've looked at the junkyards but, stock coils only put out an average of about
32kv. Doubling that gets the voltage up some.There's a resister in the bottom of
a can coil, you can drive one with 15 volts without hurting it,reversing the voltage
on the primary doesn't seem to hurt them at all either. They need to run a while
reversed, I don't know if the core reverses polarity or what, I mark ones setup to
run backwards with a R with a paint stick.About 1 minute of operation and they
run fine after that, haven't hurt one of these coils yet,they're really well made
and can take a bit of a beating. Haven't tried pulses higher than 20,000 per min.,
they start to warm around there. Just touch the can if it's getting hot you have
to cut back the primary power some.

[Sojourner]

There are good chances of finding non-stock coils as well.  A lot of the 'heavy duty" coils from older pick-ups and such can have a bigger bite.

i picked me up two the other day.  Three bucks each, plus one dollar admission to get into the yard. Noow if I can just find my schematic. =)

SOj

[raburgeson]

SOj, try searching amature xray.good double coil driver there.