bertsmobile1
Lawn Royalty
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2014
- Threads
- 65
- Messages
- 24,995
I stand correctedI think "standoff voltage" would be more accurate than stress. From an electrical perspective the idea is that the insulation will be more likely to fail due to the need to withstand greater voltage. From your later comments, you seem to agree.
Widening the gap increases the breakdown voltage. Once the spark is started, the voltage drops to nearly 0 even if the gap is made much wider.
Current has to go somewhere since it is a flow of charged particles, but that is different from voltage. Voltage does not have to go anywhere. It seems perfectly content not jumping out at an unsuspecting person looking at a wall outlet. However, forcing equipment to operate at higher voltages than it was designed to tolerate, such as using a coil/magneto with a wider spark gap will increase the demands on its insulation, which can cause the failure you described.
Thanks for doing that
Some times the brain is a bit too far behind the fingers
I have rebuilt dozens of Lucas mags where the owners fell foul of the "spark intensifiers "
On the propriority testers of this type they are usually just marked "Bad & Good " and the instructions simply tell you to widen the gap during use from the red ( bad ) small gap area into the green ( good ) large gap area while checking the engine rpm
If you get into the green & the revs don't fall off it is good
None that I have seen instruct to widen till the spark fails to occur .