> Do rotors really fail
Rotors really do fail.
> or does the contact point just get worn to where it no
> longer makes good contact?
The tip of the rotor doesn't even make contact with anything, although it does
gradually get eroded by the spark jumping to the distributor terminal. I've
never seen one so badly eroded that it was a problem, though.
> It looks like it just a metal strip embedded in a
> plastic housing that has to maintain contact at two points (top & end).
There are several ways they can fail. One of them is that the plastic breaks
down electrically, and becomes a conductor. This shorts the spark to the
distributor shaft, so it no longer jumps the plug gap.
> Or are we saying that some of them were/are manufactured to the wrong
> tolerances so they don't work correctly right out of the box?
Although reports of mechanical failures are common, I don't know of any that
didn't work at all right out of the box.
> I figure that condensers really do fail because
> there's some sort of electronic voodoo going on in the metal case
The entire ignition system is based on voodoo, which I don't claim to
understand. I mean, really ... Particles that are so small they can travel
through metal but not plastic ? Voodoo is as good a description as any !
Randall - "Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from
magic."
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