Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 16:54:44 -0500
From: gschneid@nicmad.nicolet.com (Gary Schneider)
Subject: coil grounding
>Jeremy responded to the coil-grounding thread: attach a length of wire to the
>positive terminal on the coil, start the car, and then touch the loose end
>of the wire to the engine, body or any other ground point.
I'd recommend grounding the negative end of the coil, not the positive: I
don't know about Spitfires, but many 12V coils such as Lucas Sport do not
use a ballast resistor and the positive side goes right to 12V. Grounding
that may blow a fuse or let the smoke out of the wire :-) Even grounding
the low end should not be done for very long since the coil is absorbing a
large current and will overheat. For short-term test purposes only.
On the initial query from Brent, a couple guesses why the Bear couldn't kill it:
- coil could have swapped +/- wires which would allow the car to run fine:
was the 6V you measured on the coil while running a positive voltage?
- some electronic ignitions such as MSD and Crane Hi-6 step up the voltage
to the coil and don't drive it 12V to ground. My Hi-6 appears to be an
isolated supply, has voltage (200V pulses!) across the coil terminals but
none measured to ground. Is yours the stock electronics package or a
performance model?
PS The tech could easily just kill the car when needed by removing one of
the coil primary wires. _Don't_ remove the center wire, tho, the voice of
experience says that can blow up ignition modules instantly. Hope this
helps...
--
Gary Schneider, Nicolet Instrument Technologies
phone: 608-276-6172, fax: 608-273-5061, email: gschneid@nicolet.com
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