Jump to content
SAU Community

Recommended Posts

I've been meaning to share my experience. It's been a positive one regarding the purchase of performance coilpacks off ebay.

I'm not arguing the validity of claims made in OP nor quick to jump to conclusions around speding the big $ for quality. Everyone knows you get what you pay for.

This view may help those thinking of buying second hand.

Given my budget I was rather disenchanted with paying big dollars for second-hand brandname coils - generally some only seemed to be a 20% discount to what you would buy new.

To put things in perspective: 1. They're second hand. 2. Private sellers do not necessarily have a reputation to uphold or trade as a business. 3. Km's and/or their performance for the parts are generally unverified 4. No warranty 5. Recourse for disputes generally don't exist.

20% discount doesn't seem very attractive after-taking the above into consideration, a risk I would avoid all together and simply buy new if I could have afforded it.

The ones I use claim to have a 2-year warranty. Local Aussie seller. Recourse in Aus. - replacement. Ebay Powerseller 99.8% feedback.

I currently make 260rkw with them. $265 NEW and am currently very happy.

Happy to answer any questions. Not interested in people knocking me for using them. I'm simply spelling out better alternatives to secondhand. -knock the ones selling second hand ones at a 20-25% discount to new.

i run a tune shop and have to break the news to customers that their skyline needs decent coil packs .. im sure just about every other tune shop has the same experience with coilpacks and skylines... paying $265 and then having to cough up for something decent is no bargain.

I forked out the money for splitfires about 2 years ago when i dropped the 25 into my coupe, even though they are pretty much bran new i dought id be replacing them anytime soon.

Do it once and do it right. Poor man pays twice if you cheap out. Not bagging other cheaper brands and im sure there is storys been as good as the top of the market brands but i only go for the best of the best.

That's my 2C.

I agree with what everyone is saying - pay the $ do it once do it right etc.

But it comes to a point where over-engineering for headroom for each single performance part that you won't actually end-up using may see you spend $$ unecessarily. e.g. instead put those dollars towards a bigger or highflow turbo where it will make the biggest difference.

We'll see if my coils will hold up at 300rwkw but by that stage, I have reservations about the stock motor anyway.

An interesting point I would like to make: Maybe it's not a function of power but how much PSI they can handle?? i.e. OP mentioned this particular set were breakdown / blowing-out at around 17psi?

Mine are fine but I'm only running 15psi max.

Might be useful for people to know. e.g. similar to the way we've come to a consensus around the stock rb25det turbo not doing more than 12psi.

I can vouch for the stock turbo not doing well at high boost,hubby and son playing around with a home made boost controller.

17psi,lasted about an hour before it popped.This happened in 05 got gcg to hi flow and fix it been perfect ever since. :D

No its actually the opposite the coils will work fine until they are required to work under high load.. then the missfire. Car ran fine at 12psi but could not light the fires above 16psi

That is kind of what I meant actually. IE you could audibly hear that they are not up to the job?

So with the graph in the OP, the "low power" condition with the cheap coils weren't clean power runs, those cheap coils actually had misfire? What I'm getting at is whether or not it's possible for coilpacks to sound totally normal even at full noise (no misfire sounds) and just produce less power?

No its actually the opposite the coils will work fine until they are required to work under high load.. then the missfire. Car ran fine at 12psi but could not light the fires above 16psi

Yes, that's what happens.

I've got an old Repco spark plug cleaner/testing machine. Modern workshops wouldn't waste their time with such gear but it's useful to actually see what happens when you increase cylinder pressure.

Brand new plugs will perform perfectly at around 80psi but increase the pressure to 120 and they'll be breaking down. Go to 150 and you'd be surprised how poor the spark is. Close the plug gap and away you go again.

Before take off aero engines drop each mag and run load conditions observing the rpm drop per mag.

Poor spark equates to predictable loss of hp when under load.

Showing my age but as DC3 passengers, we'd be listening for a weak cylinder as the pilot's ran up and tested each engine's mags at the end of the runway.

That is kind of what I meant actually. IE you could audibly hear that they are not up to the job?

So with the graph in the OP, the "low power" condition with the cheap coils weren't clean power runs, those cheap coils actually had misfire? What I'm getting at is whether or not it's possible for coilpacks to sound totally normal even at full noise (no misfire sounds) and just produce less power?

Yes it is possible for a weak coil not to misfire but produce less power.

Usually the discharge time increases on faulty coils. Normal inductive coil discharge time can be anywhere from 10-50us, I've personally seen twice the dicharge time in comparing a good coil vs bad, can't remember the discharge time but it was a ba coil. If you look at an engine at 6000rpm with a coil discharge time of 50us and a bad coil at 100us that means if you are knock limited on the good coil cylinder than you will be 0.05/10x 360 = 1.8degrees retarded on that cylinder.

Powerloss attributable to misfire aside, how much less are we talking e.g 1 cylinder @1.8 degree retarded as per the example above?

Could it reach as high as say 20rwkw loss with everything appearing to be 'normal'?

Edited by tranman

Powerloss attributable to misfire aside, how much less are we talking e.g 1 cylinder @1.8 degree retarded as per the example above?

Could it reach as high as say 20rwkw loss with everything appearing to be 'normal'?

Well it depends, if you have 1 good coil with 5 bad you could have real problems. Also where your peak power occurs will affect power loss. The higher the rev range the more retarded the ignition event becomes which means the greater the power loss becomes. Using the same figures as before at 7500rpm the ignition retard will be about 2.25deg.

Dropping 2degrees on a knock limited rb25 could reduce power by 10-20rwkw quiet easily.

You can test the coils response by scoping the coil high voltage side, kind of need to know what your looking at though.

Yes it is possible for a weak coil not to misfire but produce less power.

Usually the discharge time increases on faulty coils. Normal inductive coil discharge time can be anywhere from 10-50us, I've personally seen twice the dicharge time in comparing a good coil vs bad, can't remember the discharge time but it was a ba coil. If you look at an engine at 6000rpm with a coil discharge time of 50us and a bad coil at 100us that means if you are knock limited on the good coil cylinder than you will be 0.05/10x 360 = 1.8degrees retarded on that cylinder.

I meant to say "1.8degrees retarded on the other cylinders".

If the engine is not knock limited than generally you can get around the dodgy coils by advancing the timing past MBT to account for the slower coil discharge rate/coil voltage rise time.

I've been using yellow jackets for a about a year and havent had a probelm with them. When doing the research I actually came accross of lot of guys who said they have had spitfires fail on them, or had problems etc, but nothing negative about the yellowjackets, so I deceid to go with them even though I could afford the spitfires.

If you actually look at a yellow jacket carefully you can see the coils and contacts are very high quality and they are not messing about like the cheap chinese red ones, which i have also seen and used and they are horrible.

Thats said there was nothing wrong with my stock ones. They wroked flawlessly. I just felt they were old. I sold all 6 for a measly $90 kind of regret it now.

Edited by sonicz
  • 2 weeks later...

I agree with what everyone is saying - pay the $ do it once do it right etc.

But it comes to a point where over-engineering for headroom for each single performance part that you won't actually end-up using may see you spend $$ unecessarily. e.g. instead put those dollars towards a bigger or highflow turbo where it will make the biggest difference.

We'll see if my coils will hold up at 300rwkw but by that stage, I have reservations about the stock motor anyway.

An interesting point I would like to make: Maybe it's not a function of power but how much PSI they can handle?? i.e. OP mentioned this particular set were breakdown / blowing-out at around 17psi?

Mine are fine but I'm only running 15psi max.

Might be useful for people to know. e.g. similar to the way we've come to a consensus around the stock rb25det turbo not doing more than 12psi.

Just wanted to let people know- going for 300kw + on e85. Tuner has come back telling me coilpack #5 is arcing out all over the place. Told him to drop in Splitfires STAT.

We were still both impressed they managed 260kw though.

So when the mod bug bites, you'll eventually need them.

  • Like 1

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



  • Similar Content

  • Latest Posts

    • @666DAN sorry to bring you and old thread.     I've got my de+t done and it's all running great other than 1 small issue.    Car has remained auto with the na auto and tcm, I've used a stagea ecu with. NIstune board and everything is great other than my gear selection on the dash. It illuminates park, reverse, neutral, 3rd and 2nd when selected . But nothing when in  drive or what gear your in when you pop it into tiptronic. I'm sure there is maybe 1 wire in the ecu plug I need to move to rectify this. Do ya have any ideas?     Cheers man
    • Well I recently changed my rear axles and was thinking if I bumped anything, I have been driving the car for a while now though... But it has been raining today so everything is wet under the wheel arches. Brakes feel fine and can't hear any of the metal screamers, I had a squeak coming from one of the handbrake drums but that seems to have gone away a while ago. I was going down a hill when it lit up and I did feel the abs bite for a second and question why it did it?
    • Correct. Um. I dunno. I haven't cared enough about the way that the NA cars work to know for sure. But..... The 33/34 turbo manual cars have an electronic speed sensor in the gearbox that outputs a +/- (ie, sawtooth AC) voltage signal. That is connected to the speedo. The speedo then outputs a 0-5v square wave (ie, PWM) signal that the ECU (and any other CU on the bus) sees. The speed sensor is NOT directly connected to the ECU. So here's the problem. Your new ECU expects to see the PWM signal, but must somehow be getting a direct signal from the diff speed sensor. Which would suggest that the wiring of the NA car is not the same as the turbo cars. I think you will need to spend some time with (hopefully the wiring diagram for the car) and a multimeter to see what is connected to what. Then, presuming I am correct**, you would then want to separate the ECU speed signal input from the rest of the car's wiring, and probably either buy a speed signal converter, or build one using an arduino (or similar). That would take in the speed sensor signal and output a scaled (and suitably rearranged) signal for the ECU. ** We shouldn't presume that I am correct here, because there might be something else crazy going on. I don't think you could convert the speedo to be fed from the gearbox sensor, because the pulse rate from that sensor is probably different to the diff sensor and then the speedo would read wrongly. And this also wouldn't fix the ECU's problem either, because the ECU doesn't want to see the gearbox signal direct either (assuming that they are all on the same wiring, for some odd NA related reason, see above caveat!) Does this help? Probably not. Can you make it work? Almost certainly. With the above work. You should buy a handheld oscilloscope from Aliexpress so that you can view these signals directly. Connect up the probes and drive the car. Show photos of the screen when drving at known speeds and connected to different places, and we'll see what we can learn about it.
    • Assuming your brake pads are not worn right down, I'd add a little brake fluid. Is there any sign of a brake fluid leak?
    • Hello all,  I need of some help. On my drive home my handbrake light lit up and started flashing. When I got home I checked my handbrake sensor under the centre console and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I have scanned my car via the consult port, no codes shown. Checked my brake fluid as well which is half full. Tried unplugging the brake master but it didn't change anything. Thoughts on what it could be? The master float doesn't seem to be stuck. My car is an 1998 ER34 sedan GT. No hicas but has ABS Photos below 👇🏾 
×
×
  • Create New...