brucec@amex-trs.com (Bruce Carter) writes:
> I did find a wire that was chafed in the harness that goes from the
> distributor to the coil, among other places. Quick question before I
> relate how new hairdos can be acquired while working on a LBC. Should
> there be high volts in this bundle from the coil to the distributor?
Um, (slowly and thoughtfully:) nooo... At least, not the little wires...
I think you found the problem anyway. You might have been leaking high
voltage through the low-tension circuit somehow, but more likely what
you found was that your low-tension wire was grounded between the coil
and the distributor. This means that instead of the current proceeding
from the coil to the points in the distributor, which carefully grounds
it or interrupts it at just the right moments to fire the coil, the
current was allowed to go to ground before it ever got to the distributor.
Thus the coil would never fire and the car would die. (I know, current
really flows from Negative to Positive, but what the heck...)
As for your hair curling experiment, were you by any chance wearing rubber-
soled shoes? I'm inclined to suspect that you were in contact with some high
voltage part long before you touched the offending chafed wire, but the
current had no way to zap you because you weren't providing a ground through
your shoes, or anywhere else. However, once you touched the defective wire
that was providing an unwanted ground to the car body, Presto! Or should I
say, Ka-POW!
Andrew C. Green
Datalogics, Inc. Internet: acg@dlogics.com
441 W. Huron UUCP: ..!uunet!dlogics!acg
Chicago, IL 60610 FAX: (312) 266-4473
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