Don,
Thank you for an honest appraisal of the Prince of Darkness and all his works.
The crumbling rubber, dirty cotton coatings, oxidised, vermiculite coated
(rusted in iron terms) terminals and work hardened wire are all too familiar.
Stripping back to the point where you can't strip back any more is only too
frequent.
It amuses me that the people who have recently done a re-furbish to their
wiring normally claim their is a good job from a couple of years ago, you
normally don't hear of the guy saying 'I re-furbished a couple of decades ago
and don't have a problem'. Yet the same guy expects 30 year old Prince of
Darkness wiring and insulation and mechanical component not to cause a
problem.
As far as the fruitcake goes, my wife has a healthy hobby of cake decorating
and will only use fruitcakes (sponge cakes die within a week). I don't use it
at all, I've reverted to my pre-historic gene pool pattern of storing fat
whenever the pheromones waft under my nose!
Guy R Day
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2003 12:26:06 -0800
From: "Don May" <donmay@attbi.com>
Subject: Lucas and Fruitcake
Don steps up onto his soap box.
I happen to like fruitcake, not all fruitcake but there are some mighty fine
ones made. In my lifetime I have see it go from a joyous holiday treat to
the butt of cruel jokes against it and those who happen to like it forcing
many with frail egos into the fruitcake closet.
So what does fruitcake and Lucas electrical products have in common? The way
I see it they are both "in" things to bash. Is all fruit cake good . . . of
course not nor is all Lucas products bad.
I have a background in electronics. Have wired everything from special test
equipment to control units for atomic reactors. One of my hobbies is to
restore old radios most from the fifties, some pre WWII ones. Strange as it
may seem for those of lesser years than I most were actually designed and
manufactured in the US. I can tell you horror stories of what was used for
connectors and wring in many of them, some considered the top of the line in
their day. For a number of years wire was coated with rubber. After thirty
to fifty years it is about as sound as that seal at the bottom of a spridget
windshield or around the various light lenses. When working on these old
radios if you even touched this wire all the insulation will crumble off.
Folks it's not always Lucas . . . nature is cruel. It wants to reduce most
things back to dust and that includes you and I. It is particularly fond of
creating deposits on the surface of electrical connectors when sitting
without use, in some Spridgets often decades.
Most of the wire used in Spridgets is very good. I have not encountered any
of it that actually has deteriorated, however copper like most metals
oxidizes with time so every crimped connector in a Spridget should be
suspect and rightly so. Lucas did exactly what most of the electronics
industry did in those days, they crimped lugs to the ends of copper wire.
Some of those lugs were coated with silver. Have you seen one of your silver
plated spoons after a few year of non use? Seen copper gutters or pipe turn
form bight copper to a dull brownish green?
The fuse block in the early spridget was not exactly an engineering marvel
but it served its purpose. But let it sit for thirty years and what you have
is tabs with spade lugs connected to them and fuses laying against a layer
of non conductive oxidized metal surfaces. Often no current will pass at
all. We wonder why the fuel pump will not work. We wonder why sometimes the
coil will produce spark and other times not. We go crazy adjusting SU's an
points then curse Lucas. Switch contacts that normally rub clean from use
after thirty years do not conduct at all. Simply clicking them on and off
repeatedly for a minute or so will cause them to operate fine again. Better
still blast them with contact cleaner in the process.
Always the first thing to do before attempting to start engines is clean
that little fuse block, every metal surface on it. Clean every tab sticking
out of the Voltage regulator. Clean every spade lug and check for it for
resistance. Otherwise you will simply go mad looking in all the wrong places
when for some strange reason you engine dies for no apparent cause. You will
buy new fuel pumps when they are simply starved for the necessary current to
operate. Your fuel will not flow and your plugs will not spark.
Yep, there are some Lucas products that are crap, but no more so than most
other electrical products of the period these cars were built. Ever own a
Volvo of the same period? Often you see older ones alongside the road like
road killed struck down by a tiny bit of oxidation between the fuses and
their holders.
Nature is cruel or at least totally indifferent. You can blame Lucas if you
like, but it's nature folks, nature hell bent on dust to dust.
Don
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