Generators / Alternators Off for Start?

[Colonel]

The points live a hard life

When I was a kid, it was pretty standard to swipe the point's contacts with a piece
of sandpaper, and then you would check/set the gap with a feeler gauge, much like
a spark plug, but IIRC it was less than a normal spark plug gap (teens instead of tens).



There was always a slot screw you undid to adjust the points gap, but most of the
time, a little sandpaper did the trick.

Never figured out what dwell was, or how to adjust it. That's going on 50 years ago, now.

[vanNostrum]

Dwell is the amount of degrees the distributor cam rotates while the points are in contact
Dwell adjustment requires removing the rotor and spark plugs plugs to crank the engine
and having a dwell meter to measure the angle of rotation
There are other ways to do that I don't remember

[Colonel]

Back in the day, I don't remember the condensors failing so frequently -
we would change them all the time with the points.

Condensor failure - long before the points are done - seems to be a feature
of modern manufacture. Not sure why. Everyone I know gets bitten by that,
so much so that Pitts pilots carry around spare condensors in the hat rack
to change in the field.

[David MacRay]

I’m surprised Pertronix has not got an stc or whatever for their points elimination kits. Seems like a pretty good idea to me.

[vanNostrum]

In the 70s it was common the carry a spare ballast resistor if you drove a Chrysler slant 6
the perpetual motion machine, a failed resistor and running out of gas were the only two reasons
the engine would ever stop

Condenser have a finite life,dependent of cycles , temperature and dielectric
Old condensers used mica dielectric that were very reliable
Modern ones use some kind of impregnated paper that don't seem to last as long
Even at cruising power, the condenser in the magneto goes through many thousand of cycles a minute
making it more prone to a shorter life

[Colonel]

I'm suspecting a calendar life on the new capacitors ... I've seen them fail
after a few years with very little actual time in service. Interesting that the
manufacturing of them has changed.

-- edit --

ballast resistor! There's a blast from the past - I think they were bypassed
during cranking? A lot of decades ago. I remember them, screwed to the
firewall above the engine.



That's 40 years ago. I had already converted it to electronic ignition, from
the original points/condensor. Pretty cool high school car, even if I was
hated by the Left (even then) for owning it. Dark days.

[vanNostrum]

Yes it was bypassed during cranking
I put over K 200 km on a 77 Dart , I was lucky to replace this resistor only a couple of times
By then the body was so rusted one of the springs in the back suspension went through
the bottom of the trunk

Long time ago I built a Kw 1.2 Heathkit linear amplifier for the ham radio bands
it had a mix of mica, ceramic and electrolytic condensers
The power supply high voltage circuits KV 2.0 had mica condenser
None of them ever failed

[Slick Goodlin]

Heathkit

Weird connection but the company’s first kit offering was an airplane in the mid-1920s. They were quite successful with it, too.

[Colonel]

Kits are a thing of the past. Three decades-ish ago I soldered up this:



an RST marker beacon receiver kit. Designed my own 75Mhz antenna
which was installed internal to the fabric fuselage.

Worked great. Scared the shit out of me when I was flying over airports
in the USA. TC got rid of all them in Canada, maybe 1992?

Capacitors in it are still working great.

the body was so rusted

Yeah, that's when you knew a car was dead. It just didn't make sense to
spend all that time and money on metal rust repair.

Looking at an old car, people don't understand - the shine in the paint is
irrelevant. What matters is how much rust it has, and how many accidents
it's been in. Run your fingers inside the fender lips and the magnet trick
works pretty good to find the thick bondo at the bottom.

How a car looks from the top is unimportant. Get it up on a hoist and look
at it from underneath. You can see the rust, the damage repair, the leaks,
and you can wiggle stuff to see what's loose. Love those LED flashlights.

[vanNostrum]

Heathkit

Weird connection but the company’s first kit offering was an airplane in the mid-1920s. They were quite successful with it, too.

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