A battery in a traditional car cannot directly create engine spark. It’s only rated at 12 volts, after all, so it needs a little help boosting the signal to the spark plugs. To make that happen, a car ...

What’s the fastest way to a mental breakdown in your garage, and why is it an ignition issue? No doubt, that stress headache comes on strong when your car was running a minute ago, whereas now it’s ...

There are plenty of easy web design tools out there, but when Adobe decided to jump in the mix with Spark Page, it added artificial intelligence, a mobile app, and integration with programs like Adobe ...

To celebrate HOT ROD's 75th anniversary, we teamed up with CASTROL GTX to bring you some of the stories that exemplify the core of what HOT ROD is and reflect the brand's influence on America's car ...

"It's not a heap, dad. It's a classic." That's harder to justify when your classic muscle car won't start. Nothing like a high-compression V8 combined with a battery that hasn't seen a charge for a ...

Precise ignition timing is essential for high-performance engine tuning and ensuring your small-block or big-block is delivering every horsepower within its capability. Since the era of poodle skirts, ...

Paging through an ignition catalog reveals all sorts of different ignition coils for conventional distributor-type ignition systems. To say it's a mite confusing is an understatement!Just how does an ...

While your car can’t talk, it communicates with you using chimes, icons, and messages. One icon that you should never ignore is the check engine light. It turns on when the car’s onboard computer ...

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 ...