A buddy of mine bought and is fixing up my GSL-SE and it needs an ignitor. The trailing ignitor blew, so he moved the primary to the secondary and the Tach came back, so we're pretty sure I need an ignitor. Why do rotaries need them, and where can I find one?

 

The best bet for ignitors are in a local wrecking yard or from someone on this site. You can post a message in the buy/sell parts on this forum if you decide to get one through a forum member. The ignitors are used in the place of points for a car with electronic ignition. New ignitors are about $170 a piece while you should be able to find used ones for $5 or $10. So definitely go with used ones.

Kent

 

I'll post in the parts needed section, but does anyone happen to know of a shop that I can check now that might have one? If I can get it reliable within a week I can go pick her up and drive her back from Atlanta to Kansas.

 

if you end up going to the junkyard to find one, look for them on the distributor. They look something like Playstation memory cards and there's 2 on the dizzy. One is on the front side like facing the radiator and the other is facing the passenger side (hidden). i believe they can be removed with a Phillips head screwdriver (right angled if possible) and your own hands. steal them if your at the junkyard cuz they're small and expensive to buy new. then remove something cheap off the car and go pay for that.

 

I would call local wrecking yards in your area to check. They are easy to remove and are mounted on the side of the distributor. It will save you a lot of money over getting a new one. If you really want a new one, they you can always check the local mazda dealers to see if they stock them, but like I said they are quite expensive new. Most people use used ignitors with good success. The used ones are so much cheaper than new that you can afford to pick up a couple extra for the future or in case that one of them doesn't work.

Kent

 

There is an easy test in the haynes manual showing how to set up a circuit to test the ignitor to see if it is actually good or not.

 

Oh, reaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally!



Gonna go look now! Guess I should pull as many of these extras as I can from the JY before Gamble (my brother) does....

 

Can you guys help me out with the test circuit? As luck would have it, there's an 84 GS that's complete in this podunk little Kansas town. I was able to get one ignitor and would like to test it before sending it back to Atlanta. Is it relatively easy?

 

There is a better test... It involves a speaker, an ignition coil, and a spark plug...

If you have the need, you can build a quick ignitor testing station...

Okay.. so you connect the speaker the where the red and green wires went on the ignitor.. (The side that connected into the distributor.) You conenct the other terminals of the ignitor as they would be connected if it were in the car... One goes to positive 12 volts, one goes to the coil.. or something like that.. I don't remember.. Need a diagram and I'm too lazy to find my manual. I'll find it later and post some additions or I'll draw up my own diagram...

Anywhozer.. the coil should also be connected as if it were in the car...

Now use a spark plug wire to go from the coil to a spark plug... Don't forget to connect the metal part of the body of the spark plug to ground...

Tap on the speaker. The spark plug should spark. (If it doesn't work try tapping the speaker upwards... If it works then, reverse the speaker terminals.)

Why is works:

Inside the distributor, a magnetized thing under the rotor flies past a small coil which triggers the ignitor. This is the magnetic pickup... The speaker subsititutes for this, as it consists of a coil and magnet... The Ignitor triggers the coil as it was designed to, and it creates a spark.

 

In that case.......I am gonna modify my ignition system with a huge stereo.

 

Then, when your done, get a jump start pack thing, put it in a back pack for power along with all your other "equipment". Then, ask your friends to hold the spark plug wire while you secretly tap on the speaker .

~T.J.

 

The fun way to test ignitors and coils!


I don't like the haynes manual lightbulb idea to test ignitors. It seems kinda dumb if you ask me. Besides, lots of people say they try the lightbulb technique and it doesn't work, but the ignitor still works. Did they use a burned out light bulb? Did the writers/publishers simply pass incorrect info on to us?

Well, whatever the reason, I have a really cool way to test ignitors and coils.

I recently purchased 5 used '81 to '85 electronic ignition coils from a local rotary shop for use in converting some vehicles around my place to direct fire.

I needed a quick way to test them without going through the hassle of installing them, firing it up, seeing if it will run right, shutting it down, pulling them out, installing the next ones etc. So I just used an old RX-7 distributor wiring harness and pluged it into a known good ignitor and hooked the other end to one of the coils and used an aligator clip to connect the + of the coil to battery + and another aligator clip went from the aluminum backing of the ignitor to the - of the battery. I used an NGK plug wire with a BR8EQ-14 plug held in a visegrip with another - aligator clip hooked on the handle to complete the ground path circuit.

The cool part was hooking mini aligator clips to the pins on the backside of the ignitor to an old 4 inch speaker that came out of a GSL-SE. Just make sure that the + and - of the ignitor are hooked to the speaker correctly. If not, it will work better if you push the cone upward (not as easy as tapping it downward). Just try it one way, then the other way untill it works. Each time I would tap the speaker cone with my finger, it would spark the plug! A big woofer with a stiff cone works even better!

I tested 5 coils very quickly this way. To test lots of ignitors, simply swap them out one after another like I did with the coils.

The above wiring can also be accomplished with only aligator clips if need be, but I used jumper cables on the battery terminals because they have larger jaws, then hooked aligator clips to the thin metal of the jumper cable jaws. The B and C connectors on the ignitor are easy to remember. B goes to the + of the battery, and + of the coil. C goes to the - on the coil only. The way to remember it is, the + of the battery goes to + of the coil and B (which means battery), which leaves the - of the coil open to C (which means coil). That sounds kinda complicated, but it's really not.

Remember to pay attention to the back of the ignitor for heat (mine stayed cold, even after tapping the speaker to the beat of a popular song). If they heat up, you'll have little time to disconnect them. I know this to be true from personal experience. Just pay attention and wire it up correctly. They will stay cold to the touch (even after a drum solo ).

Enjoy!

 

Dude, your car is a GSL, not an SE

Sad, don't even know your own car......


Also, replacing the ignitor with a known good one from another car makes the thing run fine (well, except for all the other problems that keep popping up, totally unrelated. It sat for too long).