Alternate ignition coils.

[Guest]

Has anyone used coils from other bikes or even cars? On a 4 cylinder Goldwing site they use GL1500 coils on a GL1100. Only need 2 GL1500 coils and it makes for a hotter spark and easier starting.
Also I've seen where the used a Plymouth Neon coil set on the GL1000-1100's. I haven't looked too far into it as my GL1100 coils are working.
I have a GS550T and thought the GL1500 coils would help.Any thoughts about this ? Doug

[tom203]

Sure, people have gotten very creative using other bike's coils. For the sake of ignitor, try to keep primary side of coils in 3 to 5 ohm range. Many are using the dyna coils. Whatever you do, make sure they fit.

[mmattockx]

Has anyone used coils from other bikes or even cars? On a 4 cylinder Goldwing site they use GL1500 coils on a GL1100. Only need 2 GL1500 coils and it makes for a hotter spark and easier starting.
Also I've seen where the used a Plymouth Neon coil set on the GL1000-1100's. I haven't looked too far into it as my GL1100 coils are working.
I have a GS550T and thought the GL1500 coils would help.Any thoughts about this ? Doug

Suzuki have been really good on their parts bin engineering and they tend to carry common parts for quite a while through a lot of different models. I have a set of mid 90's GSXR600 coils and wires on my 1100E and the coils bolted straight up to the mounts with no issues at all. I would bet that all the Katana, oil cooled GSXR and water cooled GSXR's prior to the coil on plug designs would be the same or very close to each other.

If you want to wander farther afield than other Suzuki parts then be careful to match the primary resistance as tom203 mentions.


Mark

[Grimly]

It can be harder to find the primary resistances of car-related coils, but many of them are around the same value (3 to 4 ohms). Of course, there are the booby-trap ones with 1 and 2 ohms, which are not much use to me. I was looking seriously at a Fiat Punto coil pack to go along with my HEI module kit, but the Honda coils are working fine with it. If they ever pack up, I'll look again at a car coil pack as there are plenty of that era that are still good for many years yet. A surprising number of cars used what amount to a pair of bike coils mounted together and if taken off their mounting plate, can be nestled up under the tank.