Ferrari Mailing List: Re: Nerd talk, induction pickup

[Doug & Terri (dnt]

Hello –rick

Always glad to read your latest ideas.

 

The closest I ever came to making an inductive pickup for evaluating a spark profile was when I young kid helping my dad tune the family car, a ’52 Desoto.  The incident?  On the running engine I grabbed a secondary wire to push it down on the spark plug.  The result?  I looked like a chimpanzee running about the back yard waving my hands and arms above my head.  I concluded “Yep – THAT one’s working at least to the wire.”

 

Enjoyed your “dry / wet” charge explanation.  I was first introduced to that phenomenon via Colin Campbell’s 1950’s book The Sports Car Engine.”   He discusses the ignition unknowns as (I guess) we knew it that time.  Just what sets off the ignition cycle?  Is it the heat of the spark?  Is it splitting molecules which caused heat?  Fun read.  Reading it now I feel like Hank Morgan in Mark Twain’s book “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.”  I also have one other Campbell 1950’s book – both Campbell books are a must for archival sports car student – “The Sports Car, It’s Design and Performance.”

 

In a previous life – I knew some pretty sharp techs who would use “burn time” with multiple cylinder inputs with oscilloscope trace to pinpoint which cylinder(s)  was/were lazy.  I think we had a Snap-On analyzer.

 

Yeah, a ”zillion volts.”  You have my vote on that.

 

Onward

 

DOUG