In article <sM6Yc.6209$LH6.541473@twister.southeast.rr.com> ,
"K-town" <jdu52580@carolina.rr.com> wrote:

> I had a friend of mine, who is a high-performance car mechanic, tell me that
> new cars no longer use distributors, caps, rotor buttons, etc. He said that
> all new cars use a coil-per-cylinder configuration coupled with a series of
> engine speed/timing, air/fuel ratio, and throttle angle sensors to operate
> now. Is this a fact?

Pretty much so, yeah. Such precise control is the only way to meet
newer emissions and mileage requirements.



> If
> this is true, I'd like to know how this new type of ignition works.

What's to know? The spark plug needs to get a spark; instead of a
single coil and a mechanical device rotating around and feeding the
right voltage at approximately the correct time, through a bunch of
hardware which amounts to nothing more than more weak spots, each plug
gets its own coil--which is electronically triggered by the engine
computer to do its thing a the exact time required.

You've replaced mechanical bits that weren't very precise to begin with
and which are points of failure (no pun intended).