[Phil Hill]

Ok, so hopefully you will give us some feedback on the results of fitting said kit to your SVX ?? I assume there are 6 "do-dah's" to fit, one for each "coil-on-plug" yes ??

I'd be interested in knowing what it actually is inside the box, how it works. I'm not trying to "rain on anyone's parade" but I am all for some imperical results of any product, as there is too much "urban myth and legend" about what does and doesn't work. Back to back data is king, conjecture and hype are not.

Let me tell a little tail about one of my father's cars, a 1981 Fiat 131 SuperMirafiori. This had a 1600 Fiat twincam 8v engine, a little peach of a motor fed by a webber twin downdraft carb and a "clockwork" distributor complete with points which made a huge 95bhp (it was a lot for a family saloon in Europe in 1981 anyway !!). We fitted something called a "Sparkrite2000" ignition booster to it, which was basically a capacitive discharge ignition booster. This, and similar systems, takes the 12v dc supply from the ignition circuit, turns it into AC using an oscillator circuit, feeds this to a step-up transformer which increases the voltage to about 400v AC, is then rectified back to dc and used this to charge up a big capacitor.

If I remember correctly when the points close it triggers an SCR which discharges the capacitor into the coil very quickly with 400ish v dc rather than slowly charging the coil with 12v dc. This means a larger energy transfer to the coil, and as the ignition coil is nothing more than a step-up transformer itself, the coil output will be increased by it's turn ratio, thus boosting the spark "energy" on it's way to the plug. Assuming your plug leads, distributor cap and plugs could handle it of course.

The other advantage of this was you were not breaking the full back-emf of the coil across the face of the points, which ment they stayed "in gap" a lot longer before the surfaces erroded away or the condensor failed.

So it did do more-or-less what it said on the box: it did boost the ignition system voltage, it did give more reliable sparking, it did improve starting, and it did save wear and tear on the points and condensor. Did it give any more HP or MPG as claimed ?? Nope, not even after we opened up the plug gaps and re-timed the dizzy !! Did we have to buy new plug wires and a dizzy cap to combat all our hard earned extra voltage from tracking out everywhere ?? You bet !! It looked like a lightning storm under the bonnet with the old wires on !!

Most telling of all I suppose : Did we take it off this car to fit to it's replacement ?? Nope........

Don't be put off by my (our ??) cynical nature, it's the engineer in me I'm afraid !! And please do let us know how this works out for ya !!

Phil. (where's that "drinking a beer" smilie when you need it ??)