Condensers

[quickchange34]

Bored & Stroked I was lucky to find three of the Harmon Collins Distributors NOS plus parts for them years ago. You are correct , there is a difference in the secondary plates . Which one gives the most problems . I have two of the three distributors on two of my cars .They both have about 10,000 miles with no problems so far. Both engines were fresh builds . The third one is going on a engine I am building now. I have replaced the condensers on the first two when i installed them on the engines even though they were new. Yes I am running soled core wire on all three.

[Bored&Stroked]

Originally Posted by quickchange34

Bored & Stroked I was lucky to find three of the Harmon Collins Distributors NOS plus parts for them years ago. You are correct , there is a difference in the secondary plates . Which one gives the most problems . I have two of the three distributors on two of my cars .They both have about 10,000 miles with no problems so far. Both engines were fresh builds . The third one is going on a engine I am building now. I have replaced the condensers on the first two when i installed them on the engines even though they were new. Yes I am running soled core wire on all three.

The secondary plate that tends to be the most problematic is the one where you can see the points wires screws/lugs on the rotor side of the plate. Usually they tried to shield the lugs from potential coil leakage with a bit of plastic (which deteriorates). I've seen many cases there the high voltage from the coil would arc into those lugs. If you see issues, you might grind those areas out with a rotary bit and put non-conductive electrical epoxy into the areas.

The later version of the plates used a screw out the side of the plate to attach to the points wires.

I test this stuff with a full coil/plug setup on my distributor machine - with a "special" test cap that has holes bored in the top so I can see what is going on. You'll usually see the issues with the 4 plugs related to the secondary plate - the observed sparks don't fire correctly.

Maybe I'll post a couple videos to Youtube and show the issues.