Topic: Coil Rebuild - My Version

[babyfood1217]

So while I try to sort out the various other issues my build is experiencing, I thought I would tackle something new, well, new to me.

It seems a great number of you have pursued the task of replacing the wires in your stock coils, an undertaking which requires attacking your little chunks of wire and plastic and transplanting new wires.  Most people seem to have good results, so I decided I too would have a crack at it. 

I did however approach it in a way I haven't seen done yet on this forum (haven't read every single thread on it yet, but...)  I decided not to approach by dissecting the coil body and simply epoxying in a new wire, but rather I added cap ends (terminology) from a distributor to facilitate an easy wire removal from both ends (plug and coil.)

My donor distributor cap was a cheapo from Carquest, actually for my '88 toyota 4runner.  I imagine any 4 cylinder distributor would work, but the counterguy couldn't search by price (I want cheap), so I just gave him my truck specs...

[babyfood1217]

Here is one of my coils taken apart.  I started by drilling out the rubber and wire, checking often to peek inside and look for a larger lead which the wire attaches to.  Didn't really know how far to drill, just kept checking!  Once I saw the larger lead, I cut the plastic housing away.

Also pictured is the first portion I cut from the dist. cap.  Plastic cut easy with my spiral jewelers saw blades, but a coping saw or dremel would likely suffice.

[babyfood1217]

I trimmed down the portion cut out, leaving a bit of a plastic tail on.  I thought this plastic tail would lending itself to blending with the coil body when I got around to re-attaching it.  It actually seemed to get in the way more than anything, so I trimmed it off.  I also drilled a small hole through the exposed contact.  This is the contact that is inside the distributor cap.  The hole has to be there, explained later.

[babyfood1217]

Because the contacts in this distributor are aluminum, I can't solder to them (yes, I know there are ways of low temp soldering, to aluminum, but not by me.), What I did to ensure good contact was too strip 1 1/2"-2" inches of plug wire (remember I cut my old ones off?), tin it with solder, thread it through the hole I drilled in the contact, wrap it around itself, and reheat it with the soldergun.  The solder flowed into itself, and I added a little more to make a solid chunk of solder.  It is firm on the contact and wouldn't budge a bit.  The other end of the wire was tinned and soldered to the large lead which I exposed in the coil.  Added a bit of extra solder to this point too, even though the lead in the coil itself had a large amount of solder on it already.

I imagine some distributor have leads made of brass or other metals.  Maybe a solid solder connection could be made to those??

[babyfood1217]

Here I've got both cap ends attached.  I was a little unsure of how to orient them, but ultimately chose on parallel and slanting out.  I made sure to keep enough space between them for the wires to attach.  Wrapped it up with some masking tape and searched for my epoxy to fill up the empty spaces.

[babyfood1217]

I underestimated the amount of epoxy I would need, and overestimated how much I had.  I got most of the spaces filled, but I plan to go back and refill the low/shallow spots, and once complete, I'll do a single coat of either tool-dip, or truckbed liner/rhino-liner.  I pulled two cable from my truck just to illustrate what it would look like with wires attached.  I plan on getting a cheap set of wires from yet another 4-cylinder car/truck (a set for my 4runner is $16), with paying attention to choose either resistor wires, wire ends, or plugs, but not any combination of the three. 

I'll update this when I can get the epoxy fill-in finished and can get them coated.  Not sure if I have any coating material here... I'll have to check.

[Sporkfly]

Three words:

F*@#IN' COOL DUDE!

[MJL]

I was thinking of this the other day, it's possible that I was thinking of it while you were doing it.  the only difference is I was thinking of using a cap with male ends.

[aaronk]

Cool little project, you got more balls than I do drilling/cutting the coil out like that.  I would have just bought a new one.  

[ev0lution7]

I sorta had this idea as well but decided it was faster and cheeper to just drill out the old wires and put in a piece of copper wire in there as a "stub" plus i had the coper romex laying around...