Thanks for the answer Roger. This may be a stupid question, but does the
engine grounding have any affect this situation?
Chris Stephenson
cs@tscg.net
(404) 915-7669
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-alpines@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-alpines@autox.team.net]On
Behalf Of Roger Gibbs
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 9:36 PM
To: Chris Stephenson
Cc: Almjeld, Paul; alpines@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: it's long, so delete if you are not interested in Alpine motor
mysteries!
Chris,
One explanation is: the one plug wire had a low resistance (relatively
speaking) to ground - this could drain the high voltage and prevent an arc.
By
pulling the wire out a bit, the resistance path to ground is removed and the
coil output reaches a high enough voltage to arc over the
wire-gap-in-the-cap.
The arc, once initiated and being a plasma, has a low resistance, and this
allows the spark plug to arc. In essence the gap-in-the-cap isolated the
coil
from the plug wire until the arc forms. The fault could be a plug which is
fouled badly enough to have a carbon track to ground, or a plug wire with
faulty insulation.
So - that is one possible answer.
-Roger
Chris Stephenson wrote:
> snip
> The solution was to create an arc
> with the plug wire where it goes into the distributor. I did this by
> slightly pulling it away from the distributor contact. I ran it that way
for
> about 6 months before I parked the car. Maybe someone on the list can
> explain why arcing the wire worked.
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