sparks!

Shocking....just shocking.....

;-)

Lee D

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Some years ago my dad described how these sparks were made to my younger brother. At the tender age of 11 he got his hands on an Alfa HT coil, linked it up to a 12v battery and the plastic body of a garden strimmer, and went to shock some people. His mistake was to tell our parents how he had chased other children round the village with his device. It was dismantled soon after that.

David

Electrifying LOL

I remember my Physics teacher using me to simultaneously demonstrate the principle of a transformer as well as the principle of activating muscles with electricity.

I got my own back in the human hearing frequency range demonstration by hearing frequencies of over 25KHz.

Top bloke. Into motorbikes. Used to foam at the mouth when going off at tangents. Mr Redhead of The Lakes School, Troutbeck, if anyone knows him.

No, but I'm not far from you now in Lancaster. 25 years ago we had a similar character called 'Harry Ash' in S Wales who used to join a whole bench together and jolt us with his electric set up in the Physics Lab. Must have been part of the 'National Curriculum' then. Perhaps he was trying to create the perfect pupil aka Dr Frankenstein.

My teacher used to dread teaching a new class the principles of transformers because he had to grab hold of two aluminium handles on the screen separating two rooms. He said that more than once he opened the screen only to find he couldn't let go of the two metal handles on account of them having at least 10KV between them.

On or around Wed, 04 Feb 2004 18:34:12 +0000, Austin Shackles enlightened us thusly:

hah. bloody thing.

refitted the known-to-make sparks distributor, engine dead as proverb.

WTF?!?!

examined all connections. nowt wrong. can't be the dizzy cap or leads, as these are the same ones that were just working on the other dizzy. Check for presence of rotor arm, yep, got that.

still no sparks.

disconnected the king lead from the coil, connected timing light. sparks.

put lead back, pulled it off the dizzy and put it near the engine block. sparks.

put it back, put the timing light on a plug lead. no sparks.

fecking rotor arm is stealing the sparks.

I can measure about 25Meg-Ohm between the metal and a spot inside the bit that fits on the shaft. There are no obvious cracks or anything, or evidence of tracking. Of course, the pointe-type rotor arm is subtly different, and won't fit. New one on order.

So chances are that the rotor arm was at fault all along, buggrit, so I've just spent about 100 notes on ignition parts to find that a 9-quid part is the culprit.

anyone ever had a short-circuiting rotor arm? I'm damned sure I haven't. Had 'em fall apart, or be burnt at the tip, or other things, but I've never seen a leaky one.

I had a two week scenario with a Ford Sierra engine running like poo... put a new known to be good engine in...ran like poo.... after two weeks of tinkering it turned out that the guy who pulled the replacement engine out used the carb as a point to fasten the hoist..that was fine but the inlet manifold had a 1 inch tear in it under the plate which the accelerator pedal clamps too... now that was a bitch to find.

Back to your problem... have you checked the carbon bush in the dizzy cap??? they can and do stick up and also known to disintergrate.

Lee D

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This is exactly the same problem I had. A visually perfect rotor arm simply didn't work. I don't feel too bad since Warren played with it for an hour or so before I went near it and also missed it.

On or around Fri, 6 Feb 2004 12:48:34 -0000, "Lee_D" enlightened us thusly:

nah, the cap was OK and had been working. new rotor and it's as good as new.

so I now have a spare amp and pickup plate.