All,
Just a sanity check on the lay of lighting coil - thinking back to my introductory physics course:
1) Shouldn't matter if i start winding the bobbin right to left give the coil will produce AC (not the case for a pulser coil of course where initial polarity is key)
2) Be consistent with the direction of lay - wind the wire, say, right to left then run wire parallel to iron core back to right side of bobbin and repeat. (Winding right-left, then left-right etc will cancel out any voltage being produced.)
Learnt the hard way, or rather, my old man did. He wound a lighting coil for his PE400, i must admit with my instructions "it shouldn't matter how, just wind it all on". Wired it in today and got some inexplicable readings out of the multimeter - and barely enough juice to power a 12V 21W taillight bulb. Went back to the drawing board and thought a little more and reasoned the above points out - i think i've got it sussed.