Building Your Own Ignition System

If you don't want to make this test yourself, you might get your wife to hold the high tension lead and the ground wire while you manipulate the primary leads to touch the battery, explaining to her that you cannot hold all those wires at the same time. I can assure you that this method will verify whether the coil is good, however I need to caution you that your bodily injuries might be far less if you just perform the test by yourself.

Once the coil is proven good, we can proceed to make the sparker as shown in Fig. #6 and Fig. #7. The simplest high tension ignition system is the single spark ignition system as shown in the lower diagram in Fig. #7. You can build a small hardwood box of your own design to house the coil, condenser and battery. If all you desire is a single flash spark ignition then you can stop here. If you desire to build a buzz coil spark ignition system, then continue on.

Note: A condenser from any automotive or small gas engine ignition system will work in the systems shown in the Image Gallery. Direction of hookup is not critical.

For a buzz coil ignition system, start with a mounting board about 1/2" x 3-1/2" x 1/8" to 1/4" thick. The board can be any non-conductive material such as plastic, masonite, plywood or hardwood, hardwood being the classic material.

This article originally appeared in the June 1988 issue of Gas Engine Magazine. The text of this article was written by Rex Whiting, and Birk Petersen did the illustrations. Rex says that "by way of batteries, I used the batteries from a battery powered vacuum or battery powered grass trimmer that is rechargeable but small and compact."