Topic: What could be killing my coils?

[jfrabat]

I dont know if you have read my wheeling posts, but yesterday I drive from San José, Costa Rica to Panama City, Panama.  When I left San José, I felt the Jeep sputter once, but it did not do it again for a couple of hours.  Then it did it twice followed in quic succession, but did not do it again for a while.  Then, a couple of hours later, it started doing it more frequently, until finally, the Jeep died.  After checking fuel pressure, conections, etc., I replaced the coil (luckily I had one on board, because I was in the middle of nowhere, and it was already night time!), and the problem did not come back after driving for another 4 or 5 hours.

Since this happened to me once already when I was in Miami, where the Jeep died on me with the same simptoms, I am wondering what could be killing my coil.  The one that died was a screaming demon coil, and the rest of the ignition is all PD stuff (cap, rotor, wires).  The plugs are gapped to .050" (at least they were when I installed them; have not checked them recently).  Any ideas?  Oh, and by the way, the new coil was handling the new gap just fine...

Felipe

[Dylan]

I'd go with heat, vibration and moisture.

[jfrabat]

I'd go with heat, vibration and moisture.

So in other words, learn to live with this?  I mean, the Heep lives in Panama (over 90* on a daily basis year round, with TONS of humidity!), wheels in Costa Rica (you've seen the vids; mud and rivers galore!), and it's stuck to a 4 banger (need I day vibrations?)...

[Torch_Ind]

So in other words, learn to live with this?  I mean, the Heep lives in Panama (over 90* on a daily basis year round, with TONS of humidity!), wheels in Costa Rica (you've seen the vids; mud and rivers galore!), and it's stuck to a 4 banger (need I day vibrations?)...

I went to this to solve my coil problems.
here in northern Ontario.  I get to deal with freezing cold weather. road salt. snow. heat in the summer. I keeped having connector connection problems and just over all coil problems.  since I did this swap I haven't had any problems.

[aw12345]

Stock coil, stock gap on plugs and stock wires, then check the connectors for good contact. I have seen to many aftermarket racer brown parts fail prematurely.
For reliability a lot of OEM parts are your better bet

[Jeffy]

I would guess it's a connector issue.  Use some di-electric grease in the connector.

[Torch_Ind]

or you could put eye style connections on your wires and go to a old school style coil bolt on connections and never have to worry again as I did

[jfrabat]

I would guess it's a connector issue.  Use some di-electric grease in the connector.

Connection seems fine with the new coil, and I put dielectric grease on all connectors...

[Jeffy]

Connection seems fine with the new coil, and I put dielectric grease on all connectors...

Are you sure there isn't a problem further upstream?  Have you had the coils tested?

[neale_rs]

If you have it on the engine block, consider relocating it to the firewall to reduce the vibrations. 

[jfrabat]

If you have it on the engine block, consider relocating it to the firewall to reduce the vibrations. 

That's not a bad idea; I'll see how it goes with the current coil, and I'll go from there (in the mean time, I'll carry a spare in the Jeep).

[aw12345]

Here is an idea it ran for about 20 years with a stock coil, if you do not have a voltage drop to the coil simply try to buy new oem parts and go from there. Lots of aftermarket stuff is of poor quality, Still start with measuring the voltage at the positive side of the coil with the engine running and go from there. You should not have to locate anything, when it was designed and built I am pretty sure they figured that it would run in some hot environments as well as places where it is wet and humid, sometimes engineers do bother to think of these things