Another thought.
There are these hall sensors that can measure rotation. One use is in the sticks of our transmitters,
What if you stick a magnet on a output shaft and then you know exacly what position the crankshaft is at.
Feed that data in some proccsing unit like used in the solenoid system and then have a (or several) output that commands a coil to fire.
Then you can adjust the timing of each coil in software (rpm based?)or even remote. Things like rpm telemetry are then also possible.