Designing an Emergency Electrical Circuit

[ahoogakev]

Hello Fellow Oogers :

Now that my car is legal to drive and I can begin some shake down cruises ,I have been thinking
about how to make an emergency electrical circuit. Even though this car is all original, I would like to be able to make some small drives, at least, with some degree of certainty that I will get home again. The problem in my mind, is that its running on an original, 90 year old electrical harness! And that has caused me quite a lot of pondering, as to how to keep it reliable and somewhat safe.

The first thing I did, was buy a fire extinguisher; the first I've ever carried in a car. I hate making modifications, but in this case I decided at a minimum I should wire in a fuse which I did. Last week I modified a few sets of points, so that they are easy to swap out without having to pull out the bottom plate. All good, but as I see it, there was still no protection against, say, an internal popout failure, or a major wiring failure or ( gasp) a total melt down of the old harness and everything going up in flames.

I've never been great at electrical but the Model A is simple enough that I figured I should be able to design a totally independant, back up system , that might get me home in the event of some calamnity; and without too much butchery. So here is what I did:

1. Swapped out the original bakelite dist top for a REPO and drilled a hole in the side of it.

2. Cut the brass strapping off one of my modified easily removable points, drilled a hole in it, and joined a new ( pink!!!) wire to it.

3. Threaded this pink wire out the side of the dist, and wrapped it around a second condensor I screwed onto
the outside of the dist, then carried it on to the DS of the coil.

4. Took a second brand new pink wire, and ran it from the PS of the coil to the battery cable at the starter.

Its quite brutal, but even in this brutal state it did function: I disconnected the original wires off the coil, tied on my new pink ones, pulled out my good working points, and dropped my new hot wired ones. Hit the starter ( with ignition key turned off) and of course the car fired and ran just fine.

I'm sure you guys could do a better job of it ( soldering aligator clips onto more correct thick 6 volt wires comes to mind maybe even with an inline fuse) but anyways its a good starting point I think. This should get me home, if the popout were to fail , and ( if I carry a spare good coil ) , should almost certainly guarantee a " limp home" primary circuit in the event of hidden shorts/ melt downs. All without having to cut into my original harness on some dark miserable road side.

For now I am contemplating leaving the hot wired points and spare condensor dangling off the dist just as seen in the last pic, simply as a conversation piece !!! That should raise a few eyebrows , hey? Ha ha! Kev.