1. Open Road Ignition Band
2. Open Road Ignition Bar
3. Open Road Ignition Assembly

Have you been finding that your car won’t start in the mornings? Or perhaps when you’re out on the open road, you don’t seem to have the same levels of grunt and power as usual? One potential culprit could be your ignition coil, which helps turn the low voltage output of your battery into the little blue-white sparks that they are used to ignite the air fuel mixture in the engine.

Dynatek is the world leader in high performance electronic products for motorcycles. Best-in-class ignition solutions, fuel tuners, coil kits and more. Open Road Integrated Media Ignition Announces Its Marketing-as-a-Service Third Quarter 2020 Results Usage Grows 54% as More Publishers Funnel More Content into ORIM's Marketing as a Service (MaaS).

What are the tell-tale signs that can give you an indication that the ignition coil is failing – giving you a chance to get to a mechanics, and avoid a breakdown on the open road?

How does the Ignition Coil Work?

The ignition coil functions as part of your ignition system, alongside the switch battery, alternator, spark plugs and distributor. Like a kind of reverse system to the adaptor units that you might use in the home (transforming high voltages into low voltages), the coil boosts the 12V charge from your battery into a whopping 20KV to 40KV charge to ignite the petrol.

Open up the ignition coil, and you’ll find two windings around an iron core, often immersed in oil to keep the part cool. When the coil is powered up, the outer coil is flushed with charge, creating a magnetic field. This is then shut off, collapsing the field, and sending the charge to the more tightly wound inner coil, which subsequently transforms the charge into the super high voltages needed to create the sparks necessary to ignite the fuel in the pistons.

Ignition Coil Problem Signs

Be aware of the following issues. Each one could give you an indication that you’re having issues with your ignition coil. And if multiple problems occur at the same time, then whilst this will help you narrow down the cause, it’s also an indicator that you need to get the professionals in, pronto.

Stalling and Misfiring

When the ignition coil is failing or experiencing problems, it often leads to pistons misfiring or simply not firing at all, as the charge is not delivered to ignite the petrol. If you’re noticing strange noises, accompanied by a poor response from the engine leading to jerks or vibration when idling, these can be tell-tale signs that the ignition coil is on its way out. In the worst case scenario this can lead to the car shutting down altogether, and stalling when you put your foot down on the gas.

Can’t Start the Car

If your car has only one ignition coil, then it may prevent the car from starting. If the battery is properly charged and all you seem to get when you try to turn the key or hit the button is a clicking sound, then you could be looking at a problematic ignition coil. If the spark plugs are not receiving the charge they need – then the engine will fail to fire up properly.

Less Miles to the Gallon

If your engine is not burning fuel properly, the engine will need more fuel to do the same amount of work, leading to decreased fuel efficiency. Additionally, when your ignition coil malfunctions, it can also create disparities in the oxygen sensor, sending the engine more fuel than is actually required. Be aware that putting this unspent fuel through your engine is also incredibly bad for the associated systems, and can cause damage to the catalytic convertor, which is often a very expensive part to replace.

Check Engine Light Illuminated on the Dash

Although the check engine light can alert you to a number of different problem situations – one of these could be a faulty or broken ignition coil. In such a situation, you have a couple of choices. Either get down to a mechanic who can perform an OBD-II check, or get a scanner so that you can check the codes yourself. Codes P0300 to P0312 indicate a misfiring, which could be the result of an ignition coil problem, whilst codes P0350 to P0362 are reserved on all systems to indicate ignition coil issues.

Backfiring

As we mentioned with the fuel economy problem, a faulty ignition coil will often lead to unspent fuel entering into the exhaust system. When this fuel comes into contact with the hot metal of the exhaust or catalytic convertor, it can instantly ignite and explode, creating a back-fire – a loud noise that booms out of the back of the car. Whether or not this is caused by an ignition coil problem, you should always get the issue investigated.

Oil Leak

The huge amounts of current and charge being transformed inside the ignition coil lead to heat dissipation. When the part is functioning normally, the oil usually helps get rid of this thermal energy. If the coil is broken however, this can lead to overheating, which will eventually crack the housing and the oil will start to leak out of the part.

Bad Spark Plugs

If you find that your spark plugs are faulty or worn out, then they can often draw more charge than is normally expected from the engine. This can often put too much strain on the ignition coil, damaging it over time. If you find you have spark plug problems, it’s definitely worth checking the ignition coil at the same time.

How to Avoid a Faulty Coil

Take the following precautions to keep your coil working properly and effectively:

• Regular spark plugs check – as we mentioned, faulty spark plugs can cause excessive drain on the coil, which will lead to it prematurely degrading. Keep the plugs in good order to prevent this from happening.

• Inspect the coil casing – to make sure there are no oil leaks and pay particular attention to the wires connecting the coil to the electrical system. These can often give an early sign of problems as they will appear toasted if there has been a current drain problem.

• Regular service checks – pay attention to the manufacturer’s instructions, getting regular maintenance to ensure that your car is in good working order.

And Finally

Like all parts in your car, the ignition coil will degrade eventually. The huge amounts of charge and current that are constantly stored and discharged through the part take their toll and replacement becomes an inevitability. With a modicum of mechanical knowledge you can change the part yourself – or get down to a professional garage.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief @Porter_Anderson

‘A Niche Unfilled by Others’

In New York, Open Road Integrated Media has announced overnight (January 23) an expansion to its marketing services program, Open Road Ignition, which provides direct-to-consumer outreach and other marketing for publishers.

In 2018, the company reports, more than 30 publishers signed on to the program, which delivered promotional support to some 6,100 titles. Open Road’s media messaging says its marketing outreach has pushed some backlist titles onto bestseller lists and the Amazon Charts’ Most Sold and Most Read lists.

Still relatively new—announced in the autumn of 2017—the Ignition marketing scheme is credited by many for turning around the fortunes of Open Road, which was founded by industry veteran and backlist champion Jane Friedman primarily as a vault of valuable backlisted titles in ebook format from some of the most notable authors and literary estates in the world.

While that cache of more than 10,000 titles still forms the content heart of Open Road’s operation, the Ignition program has capitalized on the success of the company’s consumer newsletters, which target recipients based on their genre interests and other factors.

Publishers can pay to present their offerings in Open Road’s newsletters, and once such a partner’s baseline revenue is met, Open Road shares all sales over baseline with the participating publisher.

While dollar figures aren’t offered in tonight’s press information, Ignition is reported to have seen a 156-percent increase in revenue across all of its partners’ titles in the program, which operates on shared revenue.

Open Road Ignition Band

Highlights of Open Road’s 2018 Operations

• An expanded the number of readers on its sites, social networks, and newsletters to more than 24 million people. The programming, according to the company, used search trends to enhance interest in books and brands to bring broader audience attention levels to its consumer newsletters including Early Bird Books, The Portalist, Murder & Mayhem, The Archive, A Love So True, and The Lineup.
• A new newsletter, The Reader, focuses on new and backlist titles for approximately 80,000 young professionals who are determined to be highly educated, affluent, and voracious readers.
• Another sub-brand, Creepy Crate, is a bi-monthly curation of horror, paranormal, and true-crime related products, and that property is reported to have increased subscriptions by 32.4 percent. In getting their shipments, recipients are reported to have made goodly use of their Web cams to shoot more than 100,000 videos of themselves opening their packages.

Paul Slavin

In a prepared statement, Open Road CEO Paul Slavin is quoted, saying that the value publishers see in the Ignition approach is that the service “generates significant revenue, stimulates demand for their authors, and provides them with a turnkey digital solution for their titles.

“In 2018,” Slavin says, “we focused on maintaining profitability, building the necessary technology to scale our efforts, and populating a consumer data platform to collect information that helps us serve our consumers. We occupy a niche unfilled by others, and we’re poised to deliver significant revenue growth year-over-year for the next few years.”

Open Road Ignition Bar

From the company’s chief marketing officer, Mary McAveney, we have several specific properties with notable performance. True to the ethos of the original backlist-centered Open Road concept, she says, top-gaining authors are familiar but not recently in the spotlight. Such authors on her list and their particularly busy titles are:

• Eudora Welty, Delta Wedding
• Peter Hedges, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
• Tim O’Brien, July, July
• TS Eliot, Complete Poems and Plays
• Margery Allingham, The Tiger in the Smoke
• Umberto Eco, Kant and the Platypus

In a statement, McAveney says that other writers seeing substantial levels of success “are still actively publishing but also have a significant collection of work that have seen a spark of life since becoming part of the Ignition program.” These, she says, include Anil Ananthaswamy for Edge of Physics, Mark Bowden for Doctor Dealer, Cynthia Ozick for Heir to the Glimmering World, and Alan Le May, The Searchers).

Grove Atlantic CEO and publisher Morgan Entrekin has several hundred titles in the program, and has contributed an endorsement on how Ignition is performing for his company. “Our partnership with Open Road,” he’s quoted saying, “has dramatically increased the sales of a wide range of our backlist titles. The increased revenue for both Grove and the authors is great—but even more exciting is that this initiative is helping introduce these worthy books to new readers.

Open Road Ignition Assembly

More from Publishing Perspectives on Open Road Integrated Media is here, and more on marketing is here.