I am building an old Toyota 22r 4 cylinder engine. The engine is for a beginner drift car that may see a redline around 6500 rpm. My ignition system is made up of the stock 22r distributor, a gm hei ignition module , and quality plugs and wires. I have built a few 4 cylinder performance engines and am wondering if 4 cylinders engines ever need a performance ignition system. The 4 cylinder has twice the dwell of a v8. You read over and over that a stock hei system may be good to only 5000 rpm on a v8 so is my 4 cylinder only good to 10,000? Is the dwell set on an hei module so more real time dwell would not matter? Almost all performance 4 cylinders you see have the same expensive cdi units, coils , and distributors. Isn't That really a waste of money? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

There used to be a Ford ignition module that some used along with the reluctor pick up that gave what you seem to be thinking of, but I don't remember the Ford part number or exact name of it. A guy called debe is on both here and ETO that talks about it. So a search on both places may help you.

Here is a pretty good read about some other ignition stuff that may help - http://www.autospeed.com/cms/article.html?&title=Ignition-coil-dwell-time&A=113140