Randy,
If you turn on the ignition and then not start the engine, if the
points happen to be closed, even a perfectly good coil will certainly
heat up and perhaps heat to the point of total failure. A coil is
designed to operate with constant opening and closing of the points.
About the only "short" possible in an Amphicar that would heat the
coil up would be a partial short in the coil itself. That can cause
overheating and total failure but your test could "fry" a perfectly
good coil.
Tommy,
You might check the "dwell" of the points. If they are staying
closed too long, it can overheat and damage the coil.
I avoid these problems by replacing the points with a Pertronix
ignition module. No points to adjust or wear, no dwell adjustment,
no side load to the distributor shaft and it's all inside the
distributor. The only thing that shows is a second wire coming out
that goes to the other side of the coil. For appearance sake, I
bundle the two wires together until they reach the coil. It's a
definite winner and not even very expensive. (about $85)
John Friese
67 White
67 Red
--- In amphicar-lovers@yahoogroups.com, Randy Bograd <rdboggie@j...>
wrote:
> It's drawing too many amps. I bet you have a short in your ignition
> wiring. Try turning on the key without starting the car (press your
bilge
> blower bypass if you use it)....see if the coil heats up.
>
> Randy
>
>
> On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 19:30:46 EDT tommyintpa@a... writes:
> Hi all, Why does a coil overheat? The coil on the Amphi acted up,
the
> longer
> you drove it the worse it ran. That baby was HOT. So I had another
used
> coil
> and it worked great for two days. Now that coil has started to act
like
> it is
> going to fail. Man it is hot to the touch. I've had this car for
years
> and its
> been good so far. This is the car that has been "as cranky as
Krushev
> during a
> caviar embargo" lately. Tommy going 55MPH in the Vali IV in Tampa
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
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