Igniting a Spark

Your Volvo has thousands of parts in it. Some play a crucial role in the car, while others do not. Some are used all the time, while some are needed only for a specific time. One of the latter is your Volvo's ignition coil. Also called a spark coil, the ignition coil is an induction coil in the automobile's ignition system. The Volvo ignition coil transforms a storage battery's 12 volts into the thousands (which sometimes could reach as high as 120,000 volts) needed to ignite the spark plugs. Invented by A. Kent Atwater in 1921, the ignition coil is a simple transformer that has two sides: the 12 volt or primary side and the high voltage or secondary side. The primary side contains a few hundred tur View the rest of this article