A&L condensers?

lotsagas4u

Well-known member
Where do you buy these condensers? Snyders has a short proof one, but not sure who makes them. Berts, Brattons, appear to have the same version.

Thanks for the help.
 
From what I understand, the burnout-proof and short-proof condensers are made by A&L.
 
I got one of those condenser testers after seeing Tom's article. It is indeed the bomb! Simple, inexpensive and works great.
 
I got one of those condenser testers after seeing Tom's article. It is indeed the bomb! Simple, inexpensive and works great.

ndnchf, does it just measure the farads or does it do anything else? Most condensers will read good until they get warm. Does this load it to make it warm or anything besides measuring the capacitance?
 
While that capacitor tester looks great, you need to read and understand what the manual says.

Minor variations in the capacitance value are how you tell if a capacitor is bad or within tolerance. If you dont understand this you could easily confuse good for bad or vice versa.

It is measurement tool and you have to take the measurement and decide if a part is good or bad.
 
In the article I posted I said that the condensers I got from Bratton's, which are made by A&L, were a nominal .243 micro farads. At the time I was rebuilding about 20 distributors and had ordered that many condensers from Bratton's. I tested them all and they were all very close to .243 micro farads.

Tom Endy
 
This discussion is a few months old, but I thought some of you might be interested to see how an out of spec condenser affects a coil's spark.

This is a short video of my 1940s - 1950s era Herbrand coil and condenser tester. Using a good coil, I connected an old condenser that measures at near double the normal .mfd rating. - .469mfd. You can see the result.

FYI - The Herbrand tester has a known good internal condenser for use with normal coil testing. When the switch is turned to COND, the ignition circuit is routed through the external condenser being tested.

https://youtu.be/7thA6UA5kbk
 

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The ignition system, coil and condensor, is a tuned LC circuit. They work together to create the spark. A system that is not tuned (condensor capacity wrong) will burn out the points.
 
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