turbogrill Posted May 5, 2017 Report Share Posted May 5, 2017 Hi, I have a few questions regarding an old school ignition system, let's assume we have a traditional ignition system with breaker points. What happens if the breaker points open slightly before the distributor rotor is aligned with the spark plug connectors? Does the energy stored in the coil gets pushed out on the primary side? What happens when the rotor is finally aligned? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superdave Posted May 7, 2017 Report Share Posted May 7, 2017 When the coil is triggered to fire, it (the spark) will find the least resistive path to ground. That path may jump the gap to get to the contact on the cap, or it may be through the bottom of the rotor, or along some surface inside the cap. Ideally the least resistive path is across the intended spark plug gap, you just have to make all other paths harder. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Team Infiniti Posted May 7, 2017 Report Share Posted May 7, 2017 (edited) On 5/5/2017 at 0:31 PM, turbogrill said: What happens if the breaker points open slightly before the distributor rotor is aligned with the spark plug connectors? Been happening since inventing the ignition distributor., In a perfect world, all that is needed would be a pin head size area to xfer the arc but for the dynamic involved its internal rotor/cap interface is engineered as a relatively "wide" area. Move along, nothing to see here Edited May 9, 2017 by Team Infiniti 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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