Distributor cap?

Bwahahahaha...

The 3.5l does not have a distributor cap, guys.

John B.

Here, I just looked it up in my grimoire, and I'll 'splain it to you.

It's a distributor-less system. It uses 3 double headed coils, and it fires them one at a time, sending spark to two cylinders at a time, one spark negative, and one positive. It uses three power transistors where the gen1v6 uses one. The computer reads the crank and cam sensors and fires the coils at the right time to give the right ignition advance per the spark tables in the ecu.

A little more on pos and neg sparks. It takes a lot more current/voltage to make a positive spark. To make a negative spark, you only have to goose neg charge electrons, which have a very low mass, and thus don't have to be goosed as hard as much heavier mostly protons with a pos charge. The positive spark is also much more erosive to the plug metal. You will find much more electrode loss on the positive spark plugs.

One more note. This is also called a waste spark system, because one of the two sparks from the double headed coil doesn't do anything but light up an emptying cylinder at the tail end of and exhaust stroke.

The next evolution of ignition is the COP, or Coil On Plug system, where there is one small coil on each plug, all controlled by the ecu. This eliminates most plug wire, and means the coil has the max available dwell time to charge back up for the next spark, which is very important at high rpms when the time interval between sparks is very short.

Is it throwing any codes?