Odd connector on coil

Sounds like it's your ballast resistor - the motor will run ok without it for a while, and then the coil will pack up!

Richard

After your suggestion I checked the 'net. What I have looks nothing like these things- it's not ceramic at all, it doesn't get hot. It appears to be a small black plastic lozenge shaped thing with a spade terminal on each end.

I know the sort of thing you are suggesting, although I can't find it on my vehicle I did have one on a battery powered remote control racing buggy. Would it be just a sort of resistor or diode? If it's going to cause problems I need to replace it as the car wouldn't go with it fitted- I have had intermittant problems for a while on the ignition side including a distributor cap where the centre 'pin' had arced away, maybe these things are related.

Dave

Could it be a suppressor capacitor that someone has fitted to try to reduce interference between the coil and a radio? If so, and the capacitor has failed, then it could have caused an earth leakage, thus no spark. Alan.

Basically the ignition on a RRC (or at least carb ones) is 6V, so the gizmo is just a resistor with a huge capacity for heat disipation!

Richard

plastic

Square *plastic*? That rules out a ballast resistor then.

Sounds like a suppression capacitor. Any markings on it?

It's not a surpressor - they are like barrel shaped usually aren't they? This thing is like an in-line spade connector but with a plastic 'lump' in the middle. Dave

p.s. I struggled to start the car this moring! it was fine once running- relevant to this part??