leader condenser failures

[M.Bagshaw]

My friend has a leader which so far has had three new condensers fail, points check out all ok, any further advice would be welcome. The condensers were new Lucas bought from Draganfly.

Regards

Mark

[Roger James]

I don't trust any newly manufactured Lucas Condensers, makes me wonder where all this new Lucas stuff is coming from these days, I can't give a specific reason other than new condensers used on the Reliant 3 wheelers I run either work o.k. or just dont work at all, and thats the same for other owners, certainly with regard to the condensers I fit on the Leader and Arrows I stick to using old stock Condensers no matter how grubby they might look (they will usually respond to cleaning with fine wire wool and bit of solvol autosol polish), and it doesn't matter how old they might be, getting on for 50 plus years old some of them, I fit them to an engine, if they work then they stay on the engine.
Roger

[ian williams]

you cant leave the bike standing with ignition on and not running , this will burn the points etc out if done.

the condensers should have a thick paper card type strip on them which folds back over the top of the nuts/stud/wire connection and insulates them to stop them shorting out to the cover plate , not sure if the strips are available these days but you could make something easy enough i think from a material similar to a new 10 pound note but perhaps a bit thicker .

[TonyBaxter]

Genuine Lucas stuff is now owned by Wassell.
Just saying.

[ken-drink]

great thats all we need wassell making more stuff, not a great fan of wassel stuff, had to many failures over the years. need to find another source of bits, , going to use cibie for the headlight and LED lights at 12v and going to use other components like bosh stuff, the condenser does not have to fit into the points assembly it can be mounted somewhere else so long as it is wired correctly , i have fitted mine by the coils as it was easy to make a bracket and fit the whole thing as 1 part with modifed mountings. used smaller dia coils so it was a bit easier to get them in.
if you hunt arround there are quite a few bits that can be made to fit without problems. i own a couple of Moto Guzzi bikes so i have bosh stuff in the workshop and i buy lots of bits from germany as they have stuff that goes way back to pre war bikes and all the modern stuff as well.
Ken

[TonyBaxter]

great thats all we need wassell making more stuff, not a great fan of wassel stuff,
Ken

+1

[AndyEames]

I'm pretty sure that the latest Lucas stuff is of 'Far Eastern' provenance. But not full of eastern promise ! ( if you can remember the adverts)

[AndyEames]

I'm sure that the Accuspark or Powerspark system could be adapted to suit an Arrow. This uses a rotating magnet passing the pick-up gizmo and does away with condensors and points altogether. It would mean a wasted spark and would only work on a 12volt system using 2 x 6 volt coils in series. I have one on my 1960 Scott for around 6 years now and no problems. PLUS - its a fraction of the cost of a fully transistorised system.

[TonyBaxter]

I have talked to an acquaintance who runs a company making electrical components for motorcycles. mainly Japanese, but slowly going into the Brit field too. I mentioned I had recently bought an Arrow that I was totally restoring and would he be interested in looking at a dedicated ignition system for the model. He was, and sometime early in the Year he would take a look. I shall keep you posted.
I posed the question partly based on the feedback I have read on here recently regarding some of those unhappy with systems they had tried.

[AndyEames]

Just been looking at a picture of the Draganfly system on the Yahoo group. Very similar to the Accuspark system. Yet I read that some folk have been having starting issues with them. In my own experience this system gives a very healthy spark at low cranking speeds, as you can't exactly 'spin' a Scott over. Does the Drags system use a magnet or magnets in the rotor ?