Re: A funny thing happened on the way.....

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: A funny thing happened on the way.....
From: "Jon Lagler" <rockcrawl-at-netzero-dot-net> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)
Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2000 13:33:15 -0700
Approved: twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net
Delivered-To: fixup-tesla-at-pupman-dot-com-at-fixme

Hi,
 A very similar thing happened with my coil yesterday. It was running fine,
and all of a sudden, spark output dropped to almost nothing. I thought I had
lost one of my NSTs, but they both checked out OK. I hooked it  all back up
again, and it worked great for a few seconds and then died. I removed my
MMC, and put an identical spare in its place, and everything was back to
normal. Upon closer inspection, I noticed one of the MMC caps had leaked
oil. I peeled off the plastic wrapper, and the ceramic case was cracked. the
funny thing is, it still measures OK with a DMM.
 Maybe your cap is composed of several smaller caps inside, and one section
is blown.

Later,
Jon
----- Original Message -----
From: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2000 9:41 AM
Subject: A funny thing happened on the way.....


> Original Poster: CTCDW-at-aol-dot-com
>
> Hello, all!
>
> A rather strange thing happened to my coil yesterday, and I'm trying to
> figure it out. I re-installed the cap (plastic capacitors) on the coil,
and
> by the time I put the coil in the car, and got to my destination, there
was a
> fair amount of oil on the cap, and the base of the coil. This may have
been
> something in the back of the car, although I couldn't find anything, but
the
> cap does not LOOK like it is leaking....I brought the coil back home, and
set
> up to see if the cap was ok. here's where the odd behavior began.
> The coil ran very well for a few seconds, after which time it began to
> "sputter" and the normal 38-42" arcs were reduced to perhaps 10". this
lasted
> only for a few seconds, and the coil went back to normal. It went in and
out
> of the "sputter" mode.
>
> The other thing was that the character of the arcs is now quite different.
> The usual purple arcs are now very nearly orange, with contacting streamer
> being the normal white.
>
> I guess the question is: IF the cap lost oil, are these symptoms possible?
> I cleaned the spark gap faces, thinking that it may be
dirty/oxidized/pitted
> gap faces, but no change in coil behavior...Any thoughts are appreciated!
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> Chris Walton
>
>
>

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