WHY DO THE BA BF FALCON IGNITION COILS FAIL

One of most often questions is how do you know if a coil is working. In actual fact, it is not that hard.

For the most part, coils are very reliable given the amount of work they do compared to other components in your car.

Consider a constant voltage of 25kv and in performance coils, this can be 45kv running through the coils at a consistent rate of 2000rpm.

This never ending bombardment of power takes place in what could be considered a flimsy plastic housing. In fact it is just that, but what keeps it in place is the quality of the epoxy used to surround the actual coil.  All our customers know that we specialize in Performance coils for the BA BF and soon FG Falcon. Especially for the XR6 and XR8 cars. So if you drive any of the above you possibly could be using our Drifter Performance coils, almost 500 people are, that’s almost 3000 coils and in all those Drifter coils less than half a dozen coils have failed.

So lets first look at how a coil is constructed. In the COP or Coil over Plug, we have a small housing to hold the coil and usually a rubber boot coming off the bottom that houses the wire connection to the spark plug. Inside the housing is the coil which consists of an Iron Core around which the wiring of the coil is wrapped. Depending on the size of the Iron Core and the ratio of windings, the outcome of the power of the coil is decided. Holding all this in place is a layer of resin. One reason for the coil failing is that sometimes this resin breaks down and splits in hairline fractures sometimes too fine to be seen, allowing the spark to leak out through the body of the coil and shorting to the engine.

There are many reasons why this happens. Firstly the construction of the coil is inferior and probably the most common. A miss can be as simple as a failing inlet gasket, or simply that the coils after all the pounding they get just reach the end of their life and fail. This can take place as soon as 20000ks or less.

Misfires can be caused by other events such as a failing spark plug, burned exhaust valve, head gasket failure, dirty fuel injector, diagnosis is always needed to determine the exact problem.

 So if you’re driving a BA or BF Falcon and it starts to misbehave, check the coils before you do anything else