It’s a mystery to most motorists and car owners. Indeed how does my car start and run? What and how ignites the gasoline which I buy at the gas station pump to drive my car , SUV or truck down the road to provide me with reliable transportation throughout the year even during the cold winter seasons ?

If you look under your automobile’s hood and indeed into your engine itself you would spot that each cylinder in your gasoline driven motor has a “spark plug” which contains two metal prongs called “electrodes”. When electricity is fed at sufficiently high voltages, it jumps the gap between the electrodes in the form of a distinct “spark” (hence the terms spark plug or plugs). In sequence the spark then ignites the air-fuel mixture in the combustion chamber. Very high voltage is required for the spark to penetrate the highly compressed gasses inside the combustion chamber itself. Automobile batteries themselves supply 12 volts direct current ( d.c. as opposed to the a.c. alternating current in your home’s electrical plug in system). Yet the induction coil, which is part of your vehicle’s electrical system, boosts available battery voltage to that spark plug gap to as much as 25,000 volts. This is an amazing turnaround and system indeed which ignites the fuel in the power plant under your auto’s hood to drive you down the road or highway both speedily and reliably.

The coil works on the principle that electricity flowing through a wire produces a magnetic field around the wire. Conversely, when a magnetic field breaks down, electricity is generated in any wire within the field’s lines of force. This is the same principle used to step voltage up or down in transformers – such as you would find in your local electrical power grid to homes and businesses in your neighborhood. In the case of auto induction sparking systems the coil has two long wires wound tightly around generally a soft iron metal core.

One coil of wire, called the “primary winding”, contains a few hundred turns of fairly thick or thicker wire. This is the low voltage winding, and is connected directly to the battery via cables and electrical cabling. Another coil of wire – referred to as the secondary winding, is composed of thousands and thousands of turns of a much finer gauge wire. When the ignition switch is closed, low-voltage current flows through the primary winding In older vehicles a system of mechanical switches referred to as “points ” were used to switch current flows on and off. In most modern vehicles this is accomplished via “electronic ignition” control systems. While the older point and distributor caps might have been simpler and easier to diagnose if the car would not start due to the spark plugs “not sparking”, the newer electronic ignition systems are a million times more reliable and unlike the older “points” do not need to be adjusted or maintained as the miles go on, and mechanical wear occurs. Yet if an electronic ignition system does go down – it’s a computerized module that for the most part can not be repaired and is simply replaced with a new or functional unit.

Yet is the same result within the induction coil – which remained the same over the years and upgraded systems with a high voltage spark behind created between the poles of the spark plugs in your engine cylinders, one by one. This spark ignites the rich fuel oil mixture in your automobile’s engine both starting it and with the resultant power driving you down the road to your destination. Thus the gasoline you fill up your fuel tank with provides you with reliable and efficient transportation to your job or for errands 12 months a year rain or shine.

Bernie I. Cobbles
Abbotsford Used Truck Dealers
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