Technical Distributor Rotor Tip to Terminal Clearance?

The is the modern " put a corn cob in the coil wire tower " trick.

 

I think it was here on the H.A.M.B. somebody once mentioned they were concerned about theft of their hot rod while they were away from for a couple weeks or whatever. So, he cleverly removed the coil wire and installed in its place a length of rubber vacuum hose.

When he returned home, he had completely forgot all about his anti-theft device. It started right up! I suppose the carbon black in the rubber conducts electricity well enough.

 

One of the Champion Spark plug class teaching in high school shop class.
They would run a single cylinder briggs with two long plug wire one hook to the plug and open on the other end, then the other wire to the coil and open on the other end.
The engine would run as long as you had the two plug wire laying next to each out.

 

No,, completed the journey with the 12.9 Chrysler kicker. I never go on water without two power sources. Paddling sucks. Upgraded the old scow some years ago to this.

 

You are right about that installed points and condenser just to see the ignition patterns and the dwell and everything was hopping around like an out of balance washing machine. It idled "OK" compared to Pertronix but had kind of a lope. If I had to guess some bearing is worn egg shaped or shaft bent. Didn't even bother to take it for a test drive.

So replacing the bushings/shaft &c in a couple distributors, it ain't that tough. Gear backlash, endplay, sideplay, everything has to be pretty tight in a mechanical ignition. The electronic point replacement modules aren't nearly as affected by this but I bet it don't help anything when everything is loosey goosey..

 

saltflats description of the Briggs running with the plug wire(s) disconnected, brought back a memory of my drunken neighbor, parked in front of her house, with the motor running and herself locked inside the car. We decided to yank the coil wire, in hopes she would not drive anywhere, nor die from CO poisoning. I got the hood open, and pulled the wire out of the coil. Surprise, it still ran. Gave a big yank and pulled it out of the cap. Still running. Not wanting to cause any more repair work than needed, my buddy took a screwdriver and removed the distributor cap, and that did shut it down. The car was a 72 307 powered Nova, and my first experience with the mysteries of secondary voltage. How many of us have looked under our hoods at night, in total darkness?

 

I have looked under hood in total darkness. '65 comet, 6cyl with factory plugs and wires..The plugs would glow when they fired and if I touched a plug wire with my finger it would be a light show with all the arcing between all the spark plug wires but I wouldn't get any shocks and the engine did not skip at all..Pull a wire off a plug and let it arc to the plug or to the block or just hold away and all the arcing would appear between all the other wires..Was quite a show..

 

I bought a Single cylinder Onan generator at an auction got all the rats nest out and cleaned the carburetor and she fired up. It did smoke but when I went to shut it off it would not stop pulled the plug wire kept on running finely shut off the fuel pulled the head you could no believe the amount of carbon. As for spark you have a dead cylinder and pull the plug wire trying to find it and when the wire comes off and the spark has to jump a half inch it starts to hit.

 

I understand Bubba can't give away all his secrets, but he mentioned something to ponder about the scope can only measure the widest gap in the circuit.

So a wider rotor gap compared to plug gap would seem to increase firing voltage with fouled cylinder in a similar way as pulling a plug wire gets it to start hitting, except plug fouling wasn't too much of a concern by the time emissions tuning took off, they were more concerned with getting lean fuel mixtures to ignite without misfire.

 

I'm surprised no one mentioned rotor phasing.
https://www.google.com/search?clien...tor+phasing#kpvalbx=_rOvjXc3EA-vO5gKdurjwAw37