Unusual A Condenser

C

callcoy

Senior Member
While we were on the MAFCA Natchez Trace Tour last week, one of the 3 members from Calif. had a problem with his nice 66A CCPU. We were at the first stop on the tour, Tupelo MS, a little over 200 miles down from Franklin/Nashville Tenn. The whole group had met at the Tupelo Car Museum that morning for a group photo and a tour of the collection. When I came out of the museum, I saw the hood up on his pickup and as can be expected there were 6-8 volunteer/advisor's offering solutions to the problem. I walked over and asked him what the problem was, to which he said the truck yesterday started to pop, fart and miss on the way down. This morning on the way over it couldn't get out of it's own tracks and now it won't even fire. He had already checked and reset the points with no luck. He only had 3 miles on the truck when he arrived at the host hotel in Franklin as he had just bought the truck on the east coast and trailered there. I said lets just put another condenser in and give it a try. Fortunately he had picked up some stock parts as he didn't bring any from the left coast not knowing what it had for a distributor. All of his other A trucks have aftermarket distributors and he doesn't carry stock parts for them. It was a simple thing that goes wrong often with heat related failures of stock distributor condensers. This is not about the solution but what we found when we pulled the old condenser out. The condenser came out in 3 pieces, the pass. side portion with the mounting strap slid out with half of the "barrel missing. Next to come out was a grey/black plug the was part of the inside. The remaining 1/2 barrel portion that attachés to points was wedged in place as if it had exploded and required some carefull tapping from the drivers side to dislodge the remainder. Has anyone else experienced this condition? Pardon the length of my story!
 
on a summer tour, one of our Jacksonville club members' car got so hot the "modern" condenser did explode. the engine was overheated to the point that paint was blistering on the head.
 
callcoy said:
The condenser came out in 3 pieces, the pass. side portion with the mounting strap slid out with half of the "barrel missing. Next to come out was a grey/black plug the was part of the inside. The remaining 1/2 barrel portion that attachés to points was wedged in place as if it had exploded and required some carefull tapping from the drivers side to dislodge the remainder.
Click to expand...
This just sounds like a shorted condenser that exploded. Nothing unusual in the electronics world.

All condensers and electrolytic capacitors have the potential to suffer this fate, albeit uncommon. It's inherent in the design. A weak insulator breaks down from overwork and a pinhole leak forms. And then sometimes, that pinhole expands rapidly like the hole in a balloon. The entire insulator suddenly breaks down and you have a direct link to ground. The results are explosive.

Usually, its the results of overvoltage, heat, or cheap materials.

I'll leave it to the experts to say how often, if ever, this happens on the Model A.
 
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