Still won't start

[stouchton]

Being an electrical engineer of way too many decades experience, I can safely say that the condenser will pass all sorts of tests with meters and such. It will fail actual use tests because the high voltage it is asked to suppress.

Without a tremendously sophisticated rig to observe its dielectric failure - just substitute a good one as mentioned above.

And for those of you thinking the coil only has 6V on the primary, when the points open the primary of the coil rises in voltage till something gives - as evidenced by the arc across the points. The purpose of the condenser (capacitor) is to ensure complete magnetic field collapse. If this does not occur, the coil will magnetically saturate and not be able to build additional magnetic field when current is applied - thus no sparky.

Rate of collapse is controlled by inductance of coil primary and capacitance of condenser - with a ton of Kentucky windage allowable in the actual cap value.

By performing this function, condenser also protects points from excessive pitting - condenser takes the bulk of the current that would otherwise entirely arc across points.



All right - sorry if I am preaching - lost my sister Friday night and guess I need a preacher!

[edmondclinton]

Originally Posted by stouchton

Being an electrical engineer of way too many decades experience, I can safely say that the condenser will pass all sorts of tests with meters and such. It will fail actual use tests because the high voltage it is asked to suppress.

Without a tremendously sophisticated rig to observe its dielectric failure - just substitute a good one as mentioned above.

There's nothing like the real load I agree. However, if the condenser is bad enough the simple tests and test equipment work. No telling how much money has been thrown away on condensers, coils and spark plugs over the last 85 years for nothing when the real problem was something else.