How to fix mechanical ignition and electirical ignitions?

Most four-stroke engines have used a mechanically timed electrical ignition system. The heart of the system is the distributor which contains a rotating cam running off the engine's drive, a set of breaker points, a condenser, a rotor and a distributor cap. External to the distributor is the ignition coil, the spark plugs, and wires linking the spark plugs and ignition coil to the distributor.

The power source is a lead-acid battery, kept charged by the car's electrical system, which generates electricity using a dynamo or alternator. The engine operates contact breaker points, which interrupt the current flow to an induction coil (known as the ignition coil).

The ignition coil consists of two transformer windings sharing a common magnetic core -- the primary and secondary windings. An alternating current in the primary induces alternating magnetic field in the coil's core. Because the ignition coil's secondary has far more windings than the primary, the coil is a step-up transformer which induces a much higher voltage across the secondary windings. For an ignition coil, one end of windings of both the primary and secondary are connected together. This common point is connected to the battery (usually through a current-limiting resistor). The other end of the primary is connected to the points within the distributor. The other end of the secondary is connected, via the distributor cap and rotor, to the spark plugs.

The ignition firing sequence begins with the points (or contact breaker) closed. A steady current flows from the battery, through the current-limiting resistor, through the coil primary, across the closed breaker points and finally back to the battery. This steady current produces a magnetic field within the coil's core. This magnetic field forms the energy reservoir that will be used to drive the ignition spark.

As the engine turns, so does the cam inside the distributor. The points ride on the cam so that as the engine turns and reaches the top of the engine's compression cycle, a high point in the cam causes the breaker points to open. This breaks the primary winding's circuit and abruptly stops the current flow through the breaker points.

Without the steady current flow through the points, the magnetic field generated in the coil immediately begins to quickly collapse. This rapid decay of the magnetic field induces a high voltage in the coil's secondary windings.

At the same time, current exits the coil's primary winding and begin to charge up the capacitor ("condenser") that lies across the now-open breaker points. This capacitor and the coil’s primary windings form an oscillating LC circuit. This LC circuit circuit produces a damped, oscillating current which bounces energy between the capacitor’s electric field and the ignition coil’s magnetic field. The oscillating current in the coil’s primary, which produces an oscillating magnetic field in the coil, extends the high voltage pulse at the output of the secondary windings. This high voltage thus continues beyond the time of the initial field collapse pulse. The oscillation continues until the circuit’s energy is consumed.

The ignition coil's secondary windings are connected to the distributor cap. A turning rotor, located on top of the breaker cam within the distributor cap, sequentially connects the coil's secondary windings to one the several wires leading to each engine's spark plugs. The extremely high voltage from the coil's secondary – often higher than 1000 volts -- causes a spark to form across the gap of the spark plug. This, in turn, ignites the compressed air-fuel mixture within the engine. It is the creation of this spark which consumes the energy that was originally stored in the ignition coil’s magnetic field.

Except that more separate elements are involved, this distributor-based system is not greatly different from a magneto system. There are also advantages to this arrangement. For example, the position of the contact breaker points relative to the engine angle can be changed a small amount dynamically, allowing the ignition timing to be automatically advanced with increasing revolutions per minute (RPM) and/or increased manifold vacuum, giving better efficiency. This system was used almost universally until the late 1970s, when electronic ignition systems started to appear.