burning out condensers

burning out condensers

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Discussion

Noisy

Original Poster:

4,489 posts

284 months

Thursday 29th April 2010
quotequote all
I have a 1600 Vitesse, its a 1965 car with delco-remy distributor, the car runs well, but then over 3500 rpm starts to misfire badly, it appears the condenser is breaking down, I replace it and all seems ok, but then soon after they go again, I've ordered the proper ones for the car, it has a Lucas sport coil fitted, wondered if that could cause a issue?

Any ideas?

Paul

cpas

1,661 posts

247 months

Tuesday 4th May 2010
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Possibly, as it's creating too much voltage for the condenser to cope with. Try an electronic ignition conversion as this will cope with the extra power of the sports coil.

caziques

2,651 posts

175 months

Wednesday 5th May 2010
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Make sure the coil is for a system without ballast resistor (ie 12v), many cars from the mid seventies have ballasted systems and the coil only runs on 6v. Fit a 6v coil to a 12v ignition circuit and you will continually burn things out

tr7v8

7,299 posts

235 months

Saturday 8th May 2010
quotequote all
The sports coil cannot overload a condenser. My guess would be the condenser isn't earthed properly. Mallory had a spate of this with their condensers in 04-06 & the fix was to sand the body to give a better connection under the condenser clamp & dizzy to block clamp.