Could the ignitor be the cause of weak leading spark on the FD?
 

Been trying to solve a problem which I originally thought was coming from my Haltech E8. It turns out I have very weak leading sparks. When compared to the ones comming from the trailing coils it is yellowish in color. Trailing sparks are blue and will jump over three inches to a ground point, but the leading bearly jumps 1/4 inch. The car will start on the trailings but revs slugish and sounds like its missing. When I attach the leading plug wires it makes no difference.I just swapped out the leading coil with another one, and no difference.
Can a failing ignitor be the cause. I would think an ignitor is either working or its not since its a switch. Also the coil harness is intact and has continuty between conectors.

The car was running really well before this problem began. One day I started it up from cold and it warmed up perfectly. Before I drove it I noticed it began to sound different.

Is it common for the FD ignitor to go out?

If your coils are stock, the major culprit is the leading coil.

I've never seen or heard of an ignitor going bad. Leading coils on the other hand.....

Wouldn't hurt to check the leading pick up and make sure it's clean and has a nice gap and the wires aren't bare and maybe touching somewhere ( have you had any of the dizzy wires unplugged lately for some kind of work? )
Check + wire going to coil and make sure it's getting at least a full 12 volts . then check the - side of the leading coil and make sure the ground is GOOD . If the + side of the leading coil doesn't get good voltage it won't charge the coil proper and if the - side of leading coil is not grounded well the coil won't get a chance to collapse proper also making for a poor lazy spark .
Its possible one of the wires are broken inside the insulation from vibration or what ever . you can just check that stuff with a simple test meter . Just a thought but it won't cost anything to check these things.:)Gerald m.

This is on a FD stock IG system thus dizzy. I wil double check everything else though. Thanks for the suggestions.

in my experience ignitors either work or they don't, however they can be intermittent. i have never seen an FD ignitor fail, they are one of the most robust parts on the car, the coils however do go bad.

new coils are black with nice shiny terminals

Here we go again with this very ricer getto word for a ditribuor and we do not even have one.

My bad however with all du respect your ignorance and bad taste is not necessary . Gerald m.

Change the leading coil. If your dizzy, take an Advil.

thewird

Thought you went 2jz?

You are the one showing ignorance with your statement, and the only bad taste in your ricer-getto use of the word dizzy.

its actually from the Australians, its their slang term. its like the series thing (S4, S5, S6), somehow we didn't use the Japanese terms, we use the Australian.

you should cut the Australians a break they are upside down....

hahahahahahaha lmfao

The suspense is killing me. @jetlude how did things turn out with your weak leading spark situation? Was it the ignitor? Did you have two bad leading coils? Was it the spark plug wires?