I could write VOLUMES on Lucas. The word "Bad" just isn't bad enough to
describe the products of Joseph Lucas Ltd. Back in 1971-72 I worked for
General Motors and owned a Sunbeam Arrow. When electrical components failed I
had access to Delco Remy engineering and I sent them the bad parts to analyze.
Back then engineers rarely used profanity to describe things but they used a
few choice words to describe the quality of the stuff I sent them. Basically
the description was "poor materials, worse engineering". They said any
American manufacturer that produced products like those would be out of
business pretty quick.
My favorite Lucas failure was one of the connectors breaking off of the
Ammeter-shutting down the car's entire electrical system.
Jan
Tom Yang <TYang@compuserve.com> wrote:
Although I never tried it, I think removing the battery while the car is
still running only works with an alternator car.
Tom
Message text written by "Barbara Blue"
>
Maybe some of us are just unlucky. The only new British car I ever had was
a Series II. I would not rate the quality of the electrical components
very
high. I put only 46,000 miles on the car. Some the items that were
replaced/rebuilt included 2 overdrive relays, finally stuck a relay for a
Rambler on it, that lasted. Generator brushes lasted only 30,000 miles, a
starter that did not work 10% of the time without whacking it with the
starting handle ( much more fun than using it to crank the car) and most of
the light bulbs (don't know who made them, but they sure didn't last), and
the distributor rotor cracked and shorted out the high tension spark.
Those
are the items that I recall after 35 years. I am sure there were more.
I don't know anything about electrical circuitry, but one time the car died
in the middle of no place. Just spang shut off. Found out the battery
cable came off. Stuck it back on, it started up and ran fine. To me, that
is weird, as I have started cars with dead batteries by putting a good
battery in, started the car, taken the battery out and put the old battery
back in without the car dying. I don't recommend this, but it will work if
there are no jumper cables available.<
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