Why is it always weird stuff that breaks?

[Bruce Parker (RIP)]

Originally Posted by Paul Singleton

A friend of mine was having a hard time with his 1940 Ford sedan. It ran like crap misfiring once in a while and hard starting. The car had new points/condenser/coil and plug wires a year ago and maybe 100 miles or less. He had a box of old test equipment and found an old condenser tester. The new condenser on the car failed on the tester as did three other new ones that he had. We dug through a box of old stuff and found a used Ford brand condenser that was probably forty years old and it passed on the tester and the car now runs great. I don’t know where these new condensers are made but I don’t think that the quality control is good at all.

Interesting, the condenser that failed is WW2 vintage. It came on a NOS complete distributer. What I discovered is the WW2 coils used some kind of tar on the inside of the coil that wrecked them over time. So bright and new on the outside and non-working on the inside.

This whole episode is making me look more closely at one of those adapter plates that allows you to run a regular coil.