trailing igniter/ignition
 

hi, i see some people on this forum gut ther defective trailing igniters and wire them directly to the coils. i never had a trailing igniter on my car (1gen transplant into a 929/rx4)
so, can i run the wires straight from the dizzy to the coils (and how do i connect it upp)

or have i missunderstood something?
as of now im just running leading in direct fire waste spark MSD 6a setup

I don't think the tiny pickup coils in the 1st-gen dizzy would be able to carry anything close to the current needed to trip the coil directly, without ending up cooked in short order.

Igniter's nothing more than a high-current amplifier, really.

but then how does the gutted igniters work? what am i missing?

I'm pretty sure the gutted igniter is from when folks did the 2G coil mod. It was one
way to wire it up with the signal from the original igniter. Its also does not need to
be done that way and it wastes the 2G igniter in the process.

The other mod that uses gutted igniters was as an aid to connecting to the FB dizzy
to get the signal direct to some other ignition source like an MSD box. The signal
from the dizzy will not fire a coil directly because it never pulls down the coil
to full ground, ever. You'll just burn up your coils probably trying to do it. You have
to have an ignition source that passes current into the coil and then drops it so
the coil collapses and tries to go to ground thru the plugs. Igniters do this, as do
boxes like MSDs.

To hook up your trailing you will have to use the dizzy and either another MSD box or
an ignitor triggered from the dizzy signal. The coil output will have to go thru the
dizzy cap and rotor so that the trailings will alternately fire because you can't run
trailing in wasted spark mode like leading, it will destory your engine due to firing
at the wrong time.

thanks man. that makes alot of sense:)
so ille just run it the same way as the leading then, but fireing the msd through the dizxzy.
better go on ebay and get another 6a then ;)