<VV> Re: [SCG] 1964 Spyder questions

[BobHelt at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/17/2006 11:10:46 PM US Mountain Standard Time,  
shaun_mcgarvey at shaw.ca writes:

Thanks, Bob. I've a few different coils with appropriate  date codes for my 
car. Is there a way to test the different coils with a DMM  to tell which might 
be hotter? Do you have examples of the two different '64  coils you could run 
meter tests on to see? I'm also curious where the hotter  coil info is 
documented.
best regards, Shaun



Hi Shaun,
The # 172 coil is the hot one. I know this because I ran a series of tests  
to measure the spark output of various Corvair coils. I know of no simple means 
 of measuring coils to determine this. For years i went around measuring  
different coils with a DMM and got lots of different readings, but no pattern or  
conclusive findings. The only thing that surfaced was that all stock Corvair  
coils agreed with the Shop Manuals specs.
 
What settled this for me was that I borrowed Bob Ballew's little tester  that 
has a 12v. battery motor driven cam turning at about 1K rpm operating a set  
of points and ballast res. The coil to be tested is installed and the output  
sent to a variable spark gap. I used a digital caliper to measure the max gap  
for each coil being tested. We had a large set of coils to be tested.
This so far isn't documented anywhere except in the 2nd edition of my book,  
Corvair Secrets, now available at $24 from me PP.
Regards,
Bob Helt