Hi Chris, and Listers,
I haven't read the Jacobs' techno-hype lately but on the surface they make
some pretty spurious claims, such as being able to sense individual cylinder
"requirements" and to tailor spark output on a cylinder by cylinder basis.
To be fair, I haven't read their patent (you can get access to it through
IBM's on-line patent search engine), but it seems to me that in order for an
ignition system to sense cylinder conditions it would have to basically
monitor the coil flyback pulse (which could be dependent on the
characteristic of the spark generated by the spark plug, which in turn will
depend on the cylinder load etc.), and then make some quick decisions on
what to do for the current firing cycle, or the next. Maybe the problem is
more simple than I think it would be, but it seems to me that the decisions
that come out of this process would be kind of arbitrary, unless you throw a
lot of hardware and software at it.
Fact: A lot of people that race, use MSD ignition boxes and not Jacobs.
Another fact: modern microprocessor technology makes things that were
impossible 10 years ago simple today. A lot of the things that Jacobs' say
they do make sense on an intuitive level, but I don't necessarily believe
that you will get as large a gain as they claim, especially as compared to
an alternative system like MSD. I haven't checked pricing of the system to
see if it's worth pursuing as an alternative to, let's say, an MSD6A. Since
I've been looking into getting an MSD box, I'll consider Jacobs as an
alternative.
Regards,
Theo Smit
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Mottram [SMTP:c_mottram@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 1999 11:29 AM
> To: tigers@autox.team.net
> Subject: Electronic Ignition or snake oil
>
> Have any of you heard of this "energy pak"? Looks
> like some techno-variant on electronic ignition. Does
> this really work of is it elctronic snake oil?
>
> See it here.....
>
> http://www.jacobselectronics.com/Products/EnergyPaks.htm
>
> Thanks,
> Chris
> Thousands of Stores. Millions of Products. All in one place.
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