Technical Ignition Coil Secondary Spark Energy Comparison (N54/N55, B58 and PR)

[rev210]

No offense to anyone here, but am I the only one who sees "upgrading" ignition coils to just NOT be worth it ?
Many raved about the PR set up, until the carbon issue from the boots, now many HATE them.
R8 coils and crappy connectors plus reported fires.
Now this spring issue on these.
Are all you guys misfiring that bad ? Or trying to gain power through ignition upgrade ?
I am confused.

Agree. I have full E85 and have ran 28psi on upgraded turbos, both factory bosch and now eldor coils. Car runs 10s full weight so its making more power than most. Would it make more power with upgraded coils? No. They arent on my shopping list. However, they might be if I was trying to make 1000hp and or doing sustained power over time ,like circuit racing, where better thermal performance might help.reliabillity.

Upgraded spark is great to have access to (we are fortunate to have options) but, folk should stay away from it till really needed and not assume its a magic bullet for missfires and corrections (its not).

 

[rev210]

So would you say that you'd start getting timing corrections, and they'd go away when you replaced your coils?

I've been starting to see more timing corrections lately, particularily on cylinder 3, and have been wondering if it's crap winter gas, or if something is going on with my engine. MHD stage 2+ 93oct, no misfire codes, relatively new oe plugs w/ stock gap, but original coils with just over 60k miles on them. Maybe I should swap the cylinder 3 coil around and see if the corrections follow it. Maybe it's time for some new coils.

I was thinking of replacing my original coils with these b58's when the time comes, not because I need them now, but because I'd like to upgrade the turbo soon and thought these coils would help me run stock gap with higher boost. Not sure that I'd need these, I'd just hate to buy coils twice if original coils don't cut it down the road.

Coils wont do anything for you.

One thing to keep in mind with the engines we have is that the factory ring gaps were optimised for factory power. Over time running the relative tighter factory gaps on a high km motor run at significantly higher power gives you much less optimal heat increases on the cyl wall and piston tops. That will give you reduced thresholds for pre-ignition.
If you were to simply open up the ring gap on the factory motor to cater to the increased power , you would see a better threshold for timing and less heat. Not many people are up for pulling the head and regapping piston rings though.

Back to coil talk now.....

 

[SlowE93]

Coils wont do anything for you.

One thing to keep in mind with the engines we have is that the factory ring gaps were optimised for factory power. Over time running the relative tighter factory gaps on a high km motor run at significantly higher power gives you much less optimal heat increases on the cyl wall and piston tops. That will give you reduced thresholds for pre-ignition.
If you were to simply open up the ring gap on the factory motor to cater to the increased power , you would see a better threshold for timing and less heat. Not many people are up for pulling the head and regapping piston rings though.

Back to coil talk now.....

 

[wheela]

Thank

Coils wont do anything for you.

One thing to keep in mind with the engines we have is that the factory ring gaps were optimised for factory power. Over time running the relative tighter factory gaps on a high km motor run at significantly higher power gives you much less optimal heat increases on the cyl wall and piston tops. That will give you reduced thresholds for pre-ignition.
If you were to simply open up the ring gap on the factory motor to cater to the increased power , you would see a better threshold for timing and less heat. Not many people are up for pulling the head and regapping piston rings though.

Back to coil talk now.....

Thanks for sharing, I've never even heard ring gap brought up before, at first I thought you were taking about plug gap haha! I did some googling and learned a few things. Don't want to thread jack too much, so I'll just leave a link here for anybody coming across this who may be interested in reading about ring gaps:

Everything You Need to Know About Ring Gap!

Ring gap is absolutely critical to engine performance and longevity––and, one of our number-one tech questions. Today we explain why rings need a gap, how to do it, and some common ring-gapping mistakes.

blog.wiseco.com

 

[Dgw7000]

Think about how I feel right now.. I spend the money finally get the kit. Spend even more money on the original BMW coils purchased right through my local BMW dealer ship and they’re not cheap. All excited to get the kit installed on my n54.. With new Rob Beck game finisher turbos coming!! Spring right around the corner!! So I pulled the springs out of the kit and compare them to the springs that came with the Eldor B58 factory BMW coils. Take some measurements and realized the spring will not bottom out into the coil the way the factory coil spring does. Contact him.. he asked for pictures so I sent him the pictures that he asked for. At one point he says I may have bootleg coils, he says he has springs that’ll work with my coils. I asked for a picture I have not heard a word since. I think at this point I’m done, I’m going to return the kit for a full refund as he stated he would do! Very frustrated with the whole process!! Glad other people are able to make it work maybe later on down the road when all the bugs are ironed out!! The lack of communications is what really pisses me off!!

 

[Dgw7000]

Okay so I do see today he did contact me at 3:15 saying he would return the kit along with the cost of shipping. I did not see that so at least he did contact me and say it was OK to send it back! Just wanna be totally honest with what I posted!!

 

[Scorpstan]

Think about how I feel right now.. I spend the money finally get the kit. Spend even more money on the original BMW coils purchased right through my local BMW dealer ship and they’re not cheap. All excited to get the kit installed on my n54.. With new Rob Beck game finisher turbos coming!! Spring right around the corner!! So I pulled the springs out of the kit and compare them to the springs that came with the Eldor B58 factory BMW coils. Take some measurements and realized the spring will not bottom out into the coil the way the factory coil spring does. Contact him.. he asked for pictures so I sent him the pictures that he asked for. At one point he says I may have bootleg coils, he says he has springs that’ll work with my coils. I asked for a picture I have not heard a word since. I think at this point I’m done, I’m going to return the kit for a full refund as he stated he would do! Very frustrated with the whole process!! Glad other people are able to make it work maybe later on down the road when all the bugs are ironed out!! The lack of communications is what really pisses me off!!

try other boots. -> SSPP223E
and mix the Stock Resistor with it:
+5mm cutting from the eldor coils

B58 Ignition Coil DIY solutions

Looks like Rich did the same thing to the boots in his kit.. https://www.e90post.com/forums/showpost.php?p=27844945&postcount=85

www.spoolstreet.com

 

[Jtran212]

Hey, could you do a comparison with the new dinan ignition coils? They have new n55 and b58 coils and I wanted to see them compared to the originals and pr.

 

[Slowagon54]

Would love to see how the new B58 Dinan Coils perform as well...

 

[Torgus]

If they are like most Dinan products; expensive for lackluster performance. But...it would be nice to see how they stack up!

 

[Maroon_e90]

If it helps any the n54 dinan coils appear to outperform the eldor s55 and theyre not much more expensive than oem coils.
No idea about the b58 tho

 

[Torgus]

If it helps any the n54 dinan coils appear to outperform the eldor s55 and theyre not much more expensive than oem coils.
No idea about the b58 tho

To be fair that chart did come from Dinan right?

According to this( which I trust more than Dinan):
The Eldor S55 at 2.5 ms dwell = 91 mJ vs Dinan chart which says it should be 79 mJ?
The Eldor S55 at 3.0 ms dwell = 99 mJ vs Dinan chart which says it should be 89 mJ?


Also Dinan has their Y axis mislabeled MJ vs mJ. Technically X as well as it should be lowercase ms.

 

[Slowagon54]

For the B58´s they advertise a 10% gain in performance for their coil. 10% is not much... you ll never notice the difference. However, its cheaper than OEM and you can have them in RED (yes i know, still... red is sexy)

Technically speaking - what exactly do you have to change to make the coil perform better?

 

[Torgus]

For the B58´s they advertise a 10% gain in performance for their coil. 10% is not much... you ll never notice the difference. However, its cheaper than OEM and you can have them in RED (yes i know, still... red is sexy)

Technically speaking - what exactly do you have to change to make the coil perform better?

In laymen's terms(how I understand it) the coil takes a low voltage 12V DC input and converts it to high voltage. How do you convert low to high voltage? You use a step up transformer. Once you know your starting voltage and end goal voltage you can design the transformer via the number of windings etc. Most of the time this would just be a wire wound transformer filled with an insulator with your primary and secondary windings.

Some reading for you if interested:

Transformer - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Standard | The Aftermarket Leader Since 1919

Full-line supplier of professional-quality automotive parts for an array of vehicle systems

www.standardbrand.com

Ignition Coil Packs: A Simple Guide - Haynes Manuals

Keep your vehicle in top shape with tips and tutorials on the Haynes blog. Read our post 'Ignition Coil Packs: A Simple Guide' today.

haynes.com

Do you think Dinan paid a shop to manufacture a whole new Coilpack and then be able to sell it for less than OEM? The OEMs make hundreds of thousands of coils, Dinan? Maybe 1/1000th of their volume.

My guess is it is basically an OEM coil with red and their logo. I bet they say their tolerance is +/- 10% so there is no way anyone can prove if they are lying.

 

[Slowagon54]

Guess the coils are out of the same factory, all made in china. Maybe they just change some specs for their coils, add some colours to the housing and re-brand them to dinan? Btw found the same red style "more powerful" coils branded as DCOIL on Amazon...

 

[Torgus]

Dickass brakes should make coils.

 

[wheela]

Dickass brakes should make coils.

Any relation to Biggass Fans

 

[SlowE93]

Any relation to Biggass Fans

Be careful what u say

 

[Leno]

Could you test the Okada coils and show us the results ?

 

[Slowagon54]

Would love to see how the new B58 Dinan Coils perform as well...

I ll answer the question myself

Judge yourself (@Torgus, u got a "like" as you have been right)

3 years old OEM Eldor with ~50k miles on it:

Brand new Dinan with 5 miles on it:

PLUS:

Of course thats not the scientific way to proof things. But its true street experience...

With the Dinan i got corrections while with OEM Eldor coils i had none. Also i got long crank with the Dinan on 2 out of 5 engine starts (including the shadow code above). The logs have been taken one day apart of each other.