I was wondering if there was any major difference in COP's?

Accel?
Summit?
SoS?
Motorcraft?
Parts house COP's?
Ebay COP's?
Etc., etc.

Do some really provide better performance? And if so, is it that significant for daily drivers with heavy feet?

 

Some like Accel and MSD will have a high output voltage, but they also strain the electrical system and cause accelerated plug wear and can sometime cause pinging. The higher voltage is often achieved with thinner wire which reduces durability and longevity. Aftermarket wires use thinner wire too to reduce manufacturing costs. It hard to tell what you get.

Motorcraft is the original Ford part made by the people who created the entire system. They know what the vehicles requirements are, and offer the best value in longevity, price, and performance.

 

I purchased and installed a set of Ebay COP's and it seems like my performance has dropped off. I pondered very long as to whether or not to spend the extra cash on brand named COP's and in retrospect I think I should have spent the extra cash.

 

Reboot the PCM by powering it down for 5 min.
Do a cold restart with the headlites on high, heater on high for first warmup.
Do about a 5 mile drive then several restarts to get the battery recharge and hot starts into the learning process.
This resets all the tables.
.
I would rebut the posting about plug errosion and effects on the PCM of using higher output coils.
There is a lot of science going on in many parts of the whole system and would be a long explanation to address all of them unless it wants to be heard.
Come from the science of it, not the guessing and hear-say.
Good luck.

 

So what does rebooting the PCM achieve? I'm just curious as to the objective and if it will restore what I feel as lost performance of the new COP's, I will try it.
I would like to hear the science story.

 

one type COP will probalby not make the truck run better or worse than the other.. You might be longer life out of one if there is more "quality" in it.. That has not been determined as far as i know. I bought a set of the $100 for 8 coils on e-bay. Been installed about 20k miles. Have had one fail. Quality or just luck of the draw? I kept the original COPS to use as spares if one or two fail.

 

I just didn't know if the higher priced/higher voltage COPs actually provided better performance than the lower priced COPs.

Does anyone know if Bluegrass' theory of rebooting the PCM helps?

 

reboot will cancel all the codes. take out any "changes in program" that the computer has learned from your driving and convert back to the original factory settings... that cant hurt for some things, but i dont see how its going to help you with the COP.

 

The reality is that nobody knows who makes the economy ones on ebay or other non ford replacements . But also nobody knows who makes motorcraft ones either , ford certainly does not . They farm it out probably over seas. Maybe the place that makes those economy ones .
The oem coils seem very problematic so I would go with an economy version . You could not do any worse.

 

Ok, lets talk science.

Higher voltage equals higher heat. Higher heat means more rapid plug wear. High heat can also mean that pinging is more likely. In reality, the spark jumps the gap once the required voltage has built up, so a higher energy coil actually results in either a longer spark duration or multiple spark jumps, again, this translates to accelerated wear.

The energy of the coils is caused by a field change, which is created as the coil is energized. Energy moving through the primary coil creates a magnetic field. This magnetic field interacts with the secondary coil which has more turns than the primary. This results in a much higher voltage secondary coil. That voltage is enough to drive the spark plugs. However, as the number of turns in the secondary coil is increased, the inductive resistance on the primary coil increases. The ignition control module or PCM has to deal with this resistance. Most coils will still be within specs, so it is unlikely to cause failure directly. But it can push a weak coil driver into premature failure.

When aftermarket coils come up with their designs, some are based upon simply copying the OE design. But there are significant variations in those designs. For example lets assume they use the same gauge wire and the same number of turns. There can still be major quality differences in the insulating resin, the actual copper alloy, the quality of the connection points, how well sealed the coil is, etc.

Some coils use more turns to step up the voltage. However the coil must still fit in the same space, so the wire is usually thinner. This allows the increased voltage. But the thinner wires can get hotter and that causes the insulating resin to break down over time, and can result in decreased coil life. Some designs to increase the number of turns without making the wire thinner. I could not say which brands those might be.

Higher voltage buts more stress on all the insulators in the system, ranging from the insulating resin in the coil to the insulation on the plug wires. The higher voltage can reduce the life expectancy of the insulators and can expose any pre-existing weakness.

The higher voltage also reduces the life expectancy of the carbon conductor inside the wires. In the case of COP applications that weakness is eliminated.

I am not saying that performance coils are not a good idea, but the pros and cons have to be considered. A basic understanding of how the components work is a good idea because it enables you to understand what each change will do to the system.

I run a high output coil on my van, which is not a COP design. I choose an Accel coilpack because they were fairly reputable.

But in and of itself, the coilpack would not have done what I would have wanted it to do. To deliver the full output of the coil to the plugs, I needed better wires. After doing some research, I learned that the regular performance wires sold at the parts stores are in fact a scam. They do not deliver more energy to the plugs, but they do introduce a lot of EMI. I came across a wire that is an exception. Magnacore makes a wound stainless steel wire that carries the full output while offering better EMI suppression than the OE wires. They also last a lifetime since they have no carbon conductor that beaks down over time.

The last step in the chain was the plugs themselves. My application normally calls for a double platinum plug. This is because the system is a waste spark design, and the platinum better withstand the high energy output of the coil. But because m voltage was even higher than stock, this would result in longer spark durations and at low RPMs even multiple spark discharges. As a result, I choose to run an Iridium plug. The iridium has a higher melting point than platinum, so it wears down slower. It also conducts electricity better, and it cools down faster.

The results were noticeable. It did not improve fuel economy however. But my motivation was performance. It increased low end torque and improved throttle response.


In your situation, my guess is that the original poster just wants a good replacement for a faulty coil. I have heard some good things about the eBay coils, but there are probably a number of sellers with varying qualities. Try to find on that claim to be better than EO. Otherwise, play it safe and buy a Motorcraft. RockAuto Auto Parts sells the Motorcraft brand.

 

I don't know if it's a mental thing or what, but I don't feel the response from these Ebay coils like I felt from the OE coils.

 

I bought some cheap eBay ones last summer after my third motorcraft one went out on me.

And steve, I was told the reason the second and third cops probably went out on me was because I kept changing one at a time instead of all at once. So if any of those ebay ones goes bad and you throw a oem back in, they will probably blow again.

I'm no expert, but I was told they should all be changed at once.

 

I installed the e-bay COPs in my truck. Cleared the check engine code and it runs better then it did before. How long that will last is yet to be determined.

 

Khan..... got it pretty much right on about ignition.
Specificlly in the COP systems; the PCM uses pretty rugged software driven solid state switchs that closes a ground to the coils with 13.6 +/- volts standing on them through a fuse from battery.
The sometimes felt increase in torque from higher voltage coils is mainly due to the spark being able to fire the charge just a little earlier than a normal coil would.
This would be the same thing as advancing the ignition timing a small amount.
In most engines this would result is some increase in torque and possible ping if the motor is already running on the edge of to much advance.

 

Plug life/errosion is much more determined by combustion gas temps over the long term than the spark energy.
Often one can see the center electrode has a defenite physicial shape as well as ground strap errosion shapes.
This is the hot gases at work showing what the flame front does (swerls), much more than the spark energy.
Spark breakdown in the gap is determind by the die-electric constant of the mixture at that moment and changes for each event.
Normal breakdown voltage is usually between 7 and 10,000 volts with any remaining voltage waisted at that point. There must be reserve voltage capability in the coil design to take care of the worst case running conditions.
That being when the EGR system is called to operate producing worst case air-fuel ratios of nearly 20 to 1. In these motors the coil has to fire at a higher voltage to breakdown the lean mixture in the plug gap. If the coil does not have that reserve voltage a missfire occurs. Shorted turns will cause this and is not a hard fault to the fault detection system methods.