Electronic ignition upgrade.
Rymor,
Take no notice of Newbomb Turk & his superb ignorance. If he actually knew anything about ign, he would know that HEI is an improvement. Look at FACTS.
[1] Over the decades, spark plug gaps have increased. Why? Because the greater exposure of the mixture to the bigger spark is more likely to ensure combustion takes place.
[2] GM recommended 060 plug gaps for most engines, some had 080 gaps. I have run 1/8"for the hell of it...
[3] Variable dwell [ VD ] is MOST important & more so as the number of cyls increase [ for an 8 cyl engine ]. I suspect the reason Chrys did not have VD is that the Motorola # MC3334 IC was not available when the ECU was designed. The primary winding of the ign coil takes time to reach it's max current value, [ & therefore max efficiency at transferring that energy to the sec winding ]....& creating a spark. With more cyls to fire [8] from ONE coil, that critical saturation time is reduced...time to start preparing for the next spark. This is where VD comes in. Since there is more time at low rpms to saturate the coil, the dwell is reduced. Dwell being the number of degrees of crank angle [ not time like many think ] that that the coil is on. With fixed dwell on a street driven car, the coil gets very hot at idle/cruising & that shortens the life of the coil. Also, the coil windings are made of copper. The hotter they get, the higher the resistance & the less power the coil produces. At higher rpms, a VD system starts the coil current earlier so that the coil has enough time to saturate. A very clever system.
[4] You can buy HEIs for all types of engines that never originally had HEI. From many manufacturers. None of those companies are making Chrys dist to use Chrys ECUs........Hmm.
[5] Any ign system that uses a bal res is not going to produce as much ign power as a system that uses a low resistance coil & NO BAL RES. The HEI coil gets the full 12v. The Chry coil gets about 7-8 v. The HEI coils are about 0.6 ohm; they are also E core coils, much more efficient than the Chrys canister coil. The Chrys coil is about 1.5 ohms. The formula for power [ Watts ] is voltage squared divided by the resistance. It is obvious the HEI system provides much more spark energy.
[6] The Chrys system eliminated points, which gave more reliable ign & increased tuning intervals. It was good in that respect. It did NOTHING to improve spark energy. Same coil, same bal res used as in the points system. Hence the limited 0.035 plug gap.
See below. HEI has 40% more voltage output & 85% higher energy level.
Rymor,
Take no notice of Newbomb Turk & his superb ignorance. If he actually knew anything about ign, he would know that HEI is an improvement. Look at FACTS.
[1] Over the decades, spark plug gaps have increased. Why? Because the greater exposure of the mixture to the bigger spark is more likely to ensure combustion takes place.
[2] GM recommended 060 plug gaps for most engines, some had 080 gaps. I have run 1/8"for the hell of it...
[3] Variable dwell [ VD ] is MOST important & more so as the number of cyls increase [ for an 8 cyl engine ]. I suspect the reason Chrys did not have VD is that the Motorola # MC3334 IC was not available when the ECU was designed. The primary winding of the ign coil takes time to reach it's max current value, [ & therefore max efficiency at transferring that energy to the sec winding ]....& creating a spark. With more cyls to fire [8] from ONE coil, that critical saturation time is reduced...time to start preparing for the next spark. This is where VD comes in. Since there is more time at low rpms to saturate the coil, the dwell is reduced. Dwell being the number of degrees of crank angle [ not time like many think ] that that the coil is on. With fixed dwell on a street driven car, the coil gets very hot at idle/cruising & that shortens the life of the coil. Also, the coil windings are made of copper. The hotter they get, the higher the resistance & the less power the coil produces. At higher rpms, a VD system starts the coil current earlier so that the coil has enough time to saturate. A very clever system.
[4] You can buy HEIs for all types of engines that never originally had HEI. From many manufacturers. None of those companies are making Chrys dist to use Chrys ECUs........Hmm.
[5] Any ign system that uses a bal res is not going to produce as much ign power as a system that uses a low resistance coil & NO BAL RES. The HEI coil gets the full 12v. The Chry coil gets about 7-8 v. The HEI coils are about 0.6 ohm; they are also E core coils, much more efficient than the Chrys canister coil. The Chrys coil is about 1.5 ohms. The formula for power [ Watts ] is voltage squared divided by the resistance. It is obvious the HEI system provides much more spark energy.
[6] The Chrys system eliminated points, which gave more reliable ign & increased tuning intervals. It was good in that respect. It did NOTHING to improve spark energy. Same coil, same bal res used as in the points system. Hence the limited 0.035 plug gap.
See below. HEI has 40% more voltage output & 85% higher energy level.