Yep, you found the answer before I hit 'reply'.   Firing an open coil can do damage but not necessarily every time. 

 

For a quick & dirty coil/igniter test, clean off the nose of the plug wire socket and test with a plug wire installed and see if you can get a spark an inch long from the other end to the engine block but don't get any pink body parts in the way.   Sometimes a weak or damaged coil can fire a spark plug gap but still have a weak output.  An inch long spark is more or less a passing grade.

 

I never measured the resting current (no spark triggers) of a set of igniters but 3 amps sounds very high.

 

Tracy (finding more errors in my -8 installation)

 

On 8/5/07, David Leonard <wdleonard@gmail.com > wrote:

Well, after doing research, I find that I should never fire the coils without being connected to a grounded spark plug...  because the spark has to go somewhere....  Doh!  Hope I didn't hurt anything!!!

 

 

Dave Leonard