About ten years ago, I bought a beat-up-but-good-running 1992 Honda Civic DX hatchback, and it has been by far the most reliable motor vehicle I have ever owned. With 200,000-plus miles on the clock ...

Before transistors and computers, your spark plugs needed to know when to dance. A simple device in theory, they hold the keys to your excitement or frustration where angels fear to tread. Follow ...

It seems like such a small thing—that tiny area approximately 0.040 of an inch wide inside each combustion chamber. That area we're talking about is the gap between the electrode and strap on each ...

Engines need spark plugs to burn their air/fuel mixture, and the spark plugs need a jolt of electricity to do their work. Older cars with conventional distributor-based ignition systems did it by ...

Most drivers think of the ignition switch as the slot where they insert the key to start their car, but that’s actually the ignition lock cylinder. The ignition switch is a more complex electrical ...

Have you ever put much thought into the specifics of your car's ignition system-above and beyond the simple fact of whether it's working or not, that is? More specifically, how about those spark plug ...

My 1978 Corvette is cutting out under acceleration. I took the car to the dealership, and they told me the distributor was defective and would need to be replaced. I would like to keep as many ...

The ignition (or distributor) cap is where ignition wires that run to the spark plugs receive high-voltage current from the ignition coil. Metal contacts in the cap connect with contacts in the ...

Editor's Note: Way back in March of 1998, GMHTP ran "Opti-Spark" by Ray Bohacz, an engineering-level dissection of GM's Opti-Spark distributor. This evolutionary ignition component was a bridge ...