car update

Posted Wednesday, July 28, 2004, at 11:38AM by e;

University Auto Center just called, letting me know what was up with my car. Apparently the problem is the ignition coil. My first thought was, "what's an ignition coil have to do with a car while it's running?" The internet provided my answer, in the form of this ignition system article at about.com:

The battery is the source of the voltage for the spark we need to ignite the mixture at the proper microsecond in the cylinder. This spark requires thousands of volts to occur, as much as 120,000 volts. Where do we get these thousands of volts? The ignition coil is the source of the high voltage we need.

Ah... That makes sense. All in all, not a terrible thing to have die. With parts, labor, tax, etc, it'll be $330. And they say they'll have the car ready by 3pm. Let's review the timeline here:

• 7:40am, car dies
• 9:00am, car's at the auto center
• 3:00pm, car's ready

That's not bad at all.