MSD Ignition Coil — MSD 8207 Blaster Ignition Coil installation photos — I put this on my 1997 Volvo 850 T-5. There’s no gotchas or complexity here. If you can turn a wrench you can do this. This MSD has worked fine, no complaints at all. It can be a part of a Stage 0, but I’d label this a Stage 1 part.
Need ignition theory? Read the MVS Fast Friday™ entry on Volvos and ignition.
Here is iPD’s MSD kit that contains the mounting bracket, single wire, and instructions. That’s what I bought two years ago. It was $92 back then.
If you’re good with making things work, I’d just buy the naked MSD product on Amazon.
Like Most Supporting Components, It’s Simple Stuff
As far as ignition systems go there’s not much to know. Spark plugs, wires, cap and rotor are about it aside from the ignition coil itself. However there’s a common factor at play and from a performance standpoint it’s somewhat useful to have a deeper understanding for both performance and diagnostics when it comes to misfires.
The ignition coils used on most cars today haven’t changed all that much in the last 50 years. A simple set of windings that when provided electricity creates a magnetic field that when collapses is amplified and creates enough voltage potential that it can jump a gap between two points. For our purpose with this article that’s as far as we’ll go with the understanding of transformer (ignition coil) fundamentals. Let’s instead focus on the bigger picture as it relates to misfires, specifically those that occur from increase boost and power development.
Before we go any further let’s talk about Voltage and Amperage. To get a more easy to understand definition of these two let’s simplify a bit and defined Voltage as the Velocity of the electrical energy and Amperage as the Amount of electrical energy. Voltage=Velocity, Amperage=Amount. This is a more basic understanding of electricity but will serve well for the following discussion.
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