LOL, whacky question here, but I wonder how it would work. Some serious power goes through those audio amps, and the speaker wire coming out is generally much thicker than the wire going to the distributor.

Ignition amps are 12v I believe, not sure what the speaker input of an audio amp is. Probably not 12.

 

It wouldn't.

 

stereo amps are 12v (most are actually rated at 14.4v because that is givertake how much power they are fed with the alternator running) and the input on an amp depends on the souce, they range from .15v to 8v (to the best of my knowledge?

 

So the 12v input from an ignition wire would fry a stereo amp. I might know someone that could rewire an amp up to withstand 12v input.

 

I can modify a toaster to make it fly. What's the point?

The only thing that an ignition amplifier and a stereo amplifier have in common is that they both have the word "amplifier" in their names.

 

When you make one of those, ill take one.

They both do the same thing, amplify.

Your may be right, not worth the work, but..I was just noticing how much more powerful the 10 series msd ignitions are and their power cables are much smaller than stereo amps.

Perhaps ill read with a voltmeter what my msd 6 puts out, and what a stereo puts out. Maybe you could put a resistor on the 12v input wire down to whatever the average input for a stereo, why would it not work then?

The point is a msd 10 is expensive, lol, a 300w amp off the street is 50 bucks. Or free if I find some in the barn from some years ago....

I guess the next question to you Aperion, since I do respect your opinion, would 16 psi be enough to blow out my spark with an msd 6al?

 

Thats funny, Its true they both amplify but unless you plan on playing music through your sparkplugs.. it wont work. Yea stereo amps use 12 volts but most have a step up transformer making 20-100volts(not close enough to fire a sparkplug) to power all the transistors which use that voltage to make the sound louder which creates current(dimming lights) and heat. Speakers use an a/c signal ignition amps are d/c. A car amp wouldnt be able to fire a sparkplug because it wasnt designed to creat thousands of volts at low amps quick. That many volts would fry out the diodes and small circuits inside.

 

I don't know, I don't have much experience with forced induction. My car had a turbo with an MSD 6A at one point, but it wasn't making 16 PSI.

 

Ignition amps dont make that many volts either, thats up to the coil. Ever see the wires coming out of an ignition amp to the coil? Tiny. 14ga maybe?

But I think your right about the A/C D/C. It probably wouldnt work if thats case.

 

if by ign amp your talking about an MSD box then the purpose of the MSD is to control the spark not to create it.

The coil creates it

 

It doesnt amplify it at all?

 

A Capacitive Discharge Ignition charges a capacitor to 400V and then dumps it into the coil primary at firing time. This gives a short-duration (0.1ms) spark with a high voltage.
An ordinary transistor ignition system pulls 12V @ some A through the coil primary until firing time, at which point it "releases", which makes the coil primary "fly" up to 300-400V. This gives a long-duration (2ms) spark of moderate voltage.
Any other systems are just elaborations or combinations of these two basic methods.
So an amplifier would have to put out 400V peak at the resonant frequency of the coil to be of any use as an ignition source.

 

I was under the impression that an ignition box just put out a constant amount of power over the factory 12v, and it built up in the coil, and it was up to the distributor to decide when it released.

Im getting confused here, I dont have much knowledge of electrical systems. If you cared to elaborate more Id appreciate it!

 

wire size is determined by current not voltage thats why the wires are so small also 400v is not high voltage. stereo amps amplify current not voltage and spark plugs work on an arc so you need voltage not current i could be wrong but thats how i interpret it

 

I think your right.

 

The small mV signal from the reluctor pickup coil in the distributor is first amplified into a low-power 12V signal. This determines the timing. Then the current is further amplified in an ignition amplifier before it enters the coil that steps up the voltage.
The coil has two properties; it can store energy, and it transforms the primary voltage into a 100 times higher secondary voltage.
In the CDI the coil only transforms the applied voltage; 400 into 40000.
In the inductive ignition systems the current through the coil starts at zero when the points (or transistor) first closes, then it rapidly increases up to a maximum (only then is the coil saturated). The time & the current makes for an amount of energy that is stored as a magnetic field in the core of the coil. When the points (or transistor) opens the magnetic field starts to collapse, and this builds voltage in the windings until it breaks through somewhere.
The spark current is usually in the order of 0.1A and it only ceases to flow when the magnetic field "energy packet" in the coil is drained. This usually takes around 2 ms.
The amount of energy required to ignite the engine increases linearly with the rpm.
If you were to use an audio amplifier for ignition you would have to have a high-frequency signal being gated (e.g. 20000Hz in 2ms bursts) into the amplifier. The output would have to be transformed from 30V to 300V before going into the coil. It can be done but it requires some extra electronics and a high quality audio transformer.
An amplifier can increase the current or the voltage or both, making more power. A transformer (or a coil) only transforms the voltage (or the current, only opposite) so the power stays the same.

 

I have a better idea now, thanks man, I completely forgot about the crank trigger.