Needed to replace a coil today. Got me to thinking, why did car makers go to individual coils. There must be a good reason. I grew up with points, condensers, carburetors and a single coil. I suppose I could Google this, but, heck, I already have this written.
It eliminates the need for heavy gauge spark plug wires. This means the high voltage charge has less to travel to reach the plug. That gives a slight improvement in efficient, and also allows better control in timing the the spark.
Distributors needed a lot of maintenance, were failure prone, and not cheap to replace either. Plus with individual coils and computer control, better combustion, mpg?
Reliablility? (No single-point-of-failure), Less wiring? Similar to the reasons why magnetos were often used in aero-engines, and racing-cars…
Hmmm, I kind of get where you guys are going with the reasoning. My old school brain is still trying to sort it all out though. In the meantime, I sort of enjoyed this YouTube vid of a woman replacing all the coils on her '03 Camry (BTW, it was my '03 Camry I was working on, not my Prius). This is a total time-waster of a vid, but it does have a bit of "huh," to it, so don't blame me if you watch it then say WTH. BTW, not exactly sure I would recommend putting the screwdriver and all other tools atop the battery, as it LOOKS like is being done here.
Remember manual choke? Had it on our 81 civic, no problems. Then came our 83 accord with "auto" choke: there was a defective vacuum check valve, so it would "automatically" stall the car, at the same intersection, every dang morning, till I figured it out.
The '62 Ford Falcon Straight Six I inherited when my dad died had the manual choke. I loved it. When my fingertip fit between the bottom of the choke knob and the dash, it was perfectly adjusted for normal driving....rare occasions, had to make other "fine tunings."
