MTFCA Forum

Luke

I have noticed, with my electronic tester, that a few coils set for the 'optimum' ~2ms time-to-fire or ttf at 12V (which I believe is what Mike's machine utilises?) will not fire well in a vehicle, nor in a HCCT. Adjusting the electronic tester voltage down tends to support the observed issue (ie. m...

Luke

No, John's correct.

2 x 0.47uF 400V caps in series will give a total capacitance of 0.235uF at 800V, certainly near enough to the 0.22uF required.

Luke

If they're standard tungsten filament bulbs then generally yes (with disclaimer below). If they're LED's then possibly not, as many of these are DC only. Even if they have rectifiers built in 12VAC may be too much. Bear in mind that 12VDC is simply that, 12V. However 12VAC could have a peak voltage ...

Luke

Tim, do you know anything about the subject, or the ultimate source of the photo? Seems to me there could be quite a story there...

Luke

All these aviation stories remind me of another forum I belong to! Stan, I wonder if you have the co-ordinates of the [scary] Dupuyer airstrip you're talking about? I had a quick look around but wasn't really sure of where to settle on. I think it's extremely unlikely I'd ever fly in there, let alon...

Luke

John, Good to see it in a box, and with the 4-line screen. That's what I was going to leave mine at, but Matt's idea of showing the ramp etc is a good one. It may be possible to have both the LCD and OLED screens running if you'd want - as long as the i2c address of each unit is different, and the A...

Luke

.... Access there is by horse or foot, it does have an airstrip at Benchmark which will pucker all but the best pilots -- you'd better be there early in the morning or late at night, be underloaded, know mountain air currents and have a plane built for flying in and out of airstrips like it. The co...

Luke

Steve (and others), I apologise but I'm still waiting for components to arrive before I do much more on this. They're taking a very long time, I assume it's to do with the virus. As I don't have an OLED screen the same as Matt's I can't test any changes I'd make to the code, hence it's best that he ...

Luke

I had a go at cleaning up the image and enhancing it to see if one could get more any more detail.

Unfortunately the original isn't all that high a resolution (do you have a better scan Rich?), and I was probably a bit aggressive with some of the tweaks but here it is FWIW:

Luke

Larry,

Top marks for the quantitative analysis!

However it appears there's no free play shown? Was there indeed none, or did you start the measurement at first engagement rather than say with the pedal lightly back against it's stop?

Luke

Further to my previous 'historic' posts here's an article on "The Quiet Ford" which appears in the Progress Magazine, Wellington NZ, 2nd August 1909. Between some OCR'ing (thanks to Tesseract and the NZ National Library) and a little manual editing I also add a text version at the end of this post. ...

Luke

I came across this article in the Sept 1908 copy of "Progress Magazine", a [approx monthly] periodical published in New Zealand from 1905 to the 1920's. The mag appeared to have a reasonable degree of motoring and other contemporary engineering news, and had obviously been given some 'inside news' r...

Luke

As a result of some other research I was doing I came across a little more New Zealand motoring history. More earlier Ford related rather than specifically Model T, but perhaps interesting all the same. In 1905 and 1906 we imported several hundred vehicles, of which approx twenty were Ford's and spe...

Luke

I was interested to see if this was part of the Burton digital archive - in the hopes that a higher resolution image might have been available for enhancing (I had a go with this one but couldn't improve it much). While I wasn't able to find it immediately I did find the following image of this hard...

Luke

ivaldes1 wrote: ↑
Fri Feb 14, 2020 11:49 pm
While I am waiting for a starter, I wonder what I can cover the starter hole with and just crank start it? -- IV

Yes, this works fine.

Just make a cover plate out of a piece of 20g steel (or whatever) and fix on with the starter bolts/screws...

Luke

Luke, if you purchase a new notch, let that be your guide as to how much your pedal ramp needs to be built up.... Yes, thanks Allan (and others), however I don't have a new notch at this stage - and don't know if need to get one or not without any standard to measure it or the pedal by. Larry and o...

Luke

Scott,

Thank you very much, however I mixed up my pedals - it's the brake pedal that's the issue, not first gear, sorry!

Do you know of any dimensions for that pedal, particularly around the ramp boss?

Luke

Scott,

Mine's LHD - '25 trans, if that makes a difference.

Luke

Please excuse me for butting in, however in relation to this I wonder if anyone has specifications for the pedal cams? I've had a look at the service manual but it doesn't mention anything - perhaps they were all too new when that was written - but it'd be useful to know what the cam/ramp dimensions...

Luke

Bob, Although the points are on the low tension side you'll have back emf enough that you'd probably get a shock if you utilise non-insulated tools. However the bigger question is why would you want to this? To what standard would you measure against? Ordinarily coils are adjusted outside of the veh...

Luke

Ed, Erik, You won't get a lot of disagreement from me, however in my case after a series of earthquakes the garage floor just isn't what it was so finding a reasonable spot to use a square isn't that easy. As I use the laser for other cars it wasn't hard to use it on the T, and since I see no reason...

Luke

Good to see that innovation, Dick. It'll be interesting to hear how your trials go with a few more miles on them, hope you have continued success. FWIW I have a plastic coil here that I was given recently. I'm think I'm going to use it when I research and design my own electronic timer; it's trivial...

Luke

Jim, Kevin, Rick, Thanks for the continued information. I find it fascinating in general, but also useful to give me a better idea of what I've got. Kevin, you may be close to what's happened with mine as I had to replace the front chassis gussets prior to registering here. Hard to say whether they ...

Luke

Allan, If you have a perfectly flat floor then that should work fine (flat not being the same as level!). Out of interest; over the years I've tended to look for simple but accurate methods to do my alignments. The first one I did was nearly 40 years ago now (using a Dunlop optical gauge that I stil...

Luke

I never knew you could buy an Electric Model T. Must have only been for sale in NZ. We're pretty special down this way :D Actually, I recently took my T to an electric car group evening 8-) . Took several people for a ride and generally had a good time - there's just something about the beat of a T...

Luke

Allan, First of all my apologies, I grabbed my metric verniers when I went out to my car... I get 117mm between the centre of the bottom and top flanges. At 5 degrees the difference from vertical would be 10.2mm, at 5.5degrees it's 11.2mm. Also, when I did my alignment recently I used a cross-laser ...

Luke

Dan, thanks for your info. Interesting re GA, that would have been useful to know when I was trying to deal with the bureaucracy here! FWIW the car does seem to appear in an online register, its VIN is the engine serial number. The trans pedals are pre-26 (ie. not wide), so perhaps a complete engine...

Luke

As part of some research for a friend I came across some interesting newspaper clippings: The first was a letter to the Otago Daily Times, dated 16th Dec 1929. Clearly there had been, or was about to be, a significant increase in the cost of spares, and the writer was unhappy: odt_16_dec_1929.png Fo...

Luke

I'm happy to do that Tim, have sent you an email.

Luke

Tim, Danny, I hope you don't mind but I've taken the images, cleaned/straightened them as best as possible, and created a PDF manual. The result is attached here, I've had to downsample it 'cos I couldn't upload a 5.7MB file, but it's ok I guess. Tim, perhaps you could check if I've got the pages in...

Luke

Tony, As luck would have it I'm in the process of moving my car over to 12V and LED lighting and have been going through the research/design stage. By my calculations I'd be needing just on 5A at night with the lights and motor running, so with your customer and similar LED's your name would still h...

Luke

Not as if I didn't have a lot of other things to do I thought I'd take a quick peek to see how many Model T's we had in NZ. This is a question I'm almost always asked whenever someone sees my car and I have, up 'till now, not been able to answer. Fortunately I've ways of dealing with big data and ha...

Luke

Dan, yes I did read about the early metal-metal brakes. Guess they really were for parking only! I accept that one could use pop rivets, it's just that I wouldn't. I'm no stranger to doing whatever's needed to make things work, and I expect if one only used the brakes when stationary it would be fin...

Luke

Gosh, thanks everyone for your help - it's certainly given me a bit to go on! Dan & Larry, I'll attach a couple of photos below, from your information it seems to me that the motor may not be original as it doesn't appear to have the boss, also it doesn't have the wider brake band so I guess it mean...

Luke

Tailpiece - having looked again at some of the postings I'd previously seen I now recollect that I did see the rivet 'reversed' in the band material :oops: clearly my recent foray into the brakes and the horror story there was too vivid in my mind. At least that's my excuse, maybe age has something ...

Luke

Not wanting to hijack Scott C's thread on his 26-27 Roadster, but it prompted me to ask something I've wondered about for a while. I have '26 (well, maybe it's a '26) 'New Beauty' runabout. It was imported into this country from Douglas County, GA, somewhere between 2011-2013. Having looked it up I ...

Luke

....reason you must use bifurcated or split rivets in woven trans band lining is to sink the teeth of those splits into the woven soft fabric linings so the linings don’t pull away from the trans bands.... Ah, thanks Dan. I've not had occasion to replace my bands yet and had assumed the head of the...

Luke

Jim, Thanks, I'd read quite a bit on band replacement but didn't find an answer to my curiosity over lining material. And having the perverse 'need to know why ' that I do I'm still not sure that the brass brake rivets couldn't be used without ill effect. I've possibly missed the post that explains ...

Luke

Thanks Dan, very quick reply, and just what I needed :-) I'm pleased to hear the transmission band & brake shoe rivets are the same size. Although the 'proper' ones are bifurcated I see no reason at this stage why I couldn't use the same rivets for both jobs. Saves buying two separate boxes of them ...

Luke

Hi, Hoping someone could tell me the correct size for the brass brake shoe fixing rivets for a '26 please (with the larger brake drums)? These are the part hollow rivets that are fitted through the friction material to the metal shoe itself. In my case I expect the friction material to be 3/16" thic...

Luke

Neil, I'd hoped that Mike K was going to respond to your question because I've never seen one of his ECCT's, let alone operated one, so I'm not the best person to ask, sorry. However I think Mike sets a target time to fire, and all coils are measured against this. If a coil takes a longer or shorter...

Luke

W Austen wrote: ↑
Fri Jan 31, 2020 6:45 pm
Now that it's 2020 maybe it will move to 20

Eh? Don't you mean 40!

It's 2022 we've got watch out for:

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(answer)
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-styl ... 05734.html

Luke

Having had something to do with forum software I expect it's just that a version upgrade will have introduced some standard conditions that weren't there before, and which the admins may or may not wish to alter at some stage. A bit like the loss of location detail that occurred - possibly at the sa...

Luke

John, Pleased to hear you've been using the software (where's the thumbs up icon?!), thanks for letting us know :D Yes it's meant to be a triple pole two-way switch - not my best diagram I'm afraid. It's simply there to switch the coil to either the FET/H-bridge, or the cap test pins on the Arduino....

Luke

Neil, The 'FACT' theory of operation and that of the ECCT are essentially the same. The essence of it is that a motor doesn't care about 'average current setting' (ala HCCT), rather it simply wants to see consistent spark at the right time, and across all four cylinders. With modern electronics it's...

Luke

As mentioned earlier, on Wednesday we tested a number of coils from several sources. The coils included brass-tops and plastics. The methodology used was to initially set the points (some were dressed) by feeler gauge, then test the capacitors and set the coil timing in the 'FACT' at 12.1V. Primary ...

Luke

Scott, Chris' meter scale is fairly cramped at the lower end, 2V might be difficult to determine, and for various reasons it'll be several weeks before any further opportunity to test so I'm not able to comment on that much further. However wrt your enquiry on the range of average current draw, and ...

Luke

Scott, Regularity of spark at low voltage would be affected largely by points condition and adjustment (all other parameters being equal). At the risk of going over old ground too often: Setting coils via ttf method is done to ensure that all of the coils in a set of four will fire at the same time,...

Luke

Scott, That comment was poorly worded on my part because what you took from it is not quite what I intended it to mean, sorry :? However, to centre on your conclusion, and so that I don't misunderstand, are you saying that you consider it will be harder to crank start your car with coils set by ttf,...

Luke

Mike, I fully agree that quantitative data for performance is much preferred and indisputable. It's good you've done that work and can provide some hard detail for those interested enough to look at it. There is of course the slightly more qualitative 'smoothness' of an engine too that may be a fact...

Luke

I'm curious as to why an AC source equivalent to the Mag was not considered for the input voltage of the tester rather then a 12VDC or 6VDC source (other than the added complexity and cost of additional circuity)? The RMS value (the DC component) of the AC magneto at speed is higher than the 12VDC ...

Luke

Jim, I didn't check their inductance, but with Chris' (owner's) indulgence I may be able do that tomorrow and will let you know. As a complete aside I'm presently waiting for some parts to arrive before (hopefully) finalising the tester design, at least for me. Unfortunately as we're at the bottom o...

Luke

Will, just a supporting comment here as I completely 'get' the desire to do new things and learn through fixing things oneself. I expect to be doing the same with my engine (or a donor) in the near future. Although I did something similar many years ago it's sufficiently long ago that it doesn't rea...

Luke

Mike, Thanks for the link. It looks like you did a thorough job, and I expect it was personally satisfying to have your thesis and work affirmed. It can also be quite interesting just working out how to test such things and carrying it out can't it! I've been staggered at the variability in inductan...

Luke

Chris, As far as the tester is concerned, with the way it's wired up at present you could simply supply 30V (or whatever) to the input of the switching device and it would record the events normally. Both the BTS7960 and the L298 would handle that ok. John (and Chris), You've echoed some earlier com...

Luke

John, Quite agree it's the consistency across coils that matters most, but thanks especially for your views on absolute time. It was some time ago that you wrote your article and I'd wondered if you'd discovered anything in the interim. Clearly you've tested a lot of coils and would have a very good...

Luke

Jeff, My memories of etching PCB's are less 'fond' than yours methinks! I seem to recall adding acid to the solution to speed things up (and heating it) :shock: but the bit I really didn't like was drilling all the holes, now that was particularly painful. I too have wondered what Henry would think....

Luke

Matt & John, I use a Nano, it's a bit cheaper/smaller than the Uno, and you can solder directly to it if you want. It has the regulator just like an Uno so you can run it on 12V. Just commenting here - there's nothing wrong with the Uno! With the diagram just bear in mind there's another switch to g...

Luke

John, Thanks for that - it brings back memories! Your experience re the coil working better with a shorted output was similar as mine, except I had written some software to utilise the ringing principle similar to what you describe. Oh well! Yes, that's a good idea of Matt's, the shape of the ramp, ...

Luke

Peter, I've got the scans you sent by email and have responded, thanks. I'll give them a quick touchup and will see if I can post them in place of the earlier ones that I did from John's images. It may be they need to be shrunk a little in terms of data size. Update. Peter here are your original ima...

Luke

Good job on that display Matt! I'm also pleased to read someone else burns the midnight oil on such projects :-) I'd got a monochrome version of one of those displays coming from some time ago but they take a while to get here, so it's great that you've done that work. FYI at a later stage I was goi...

Luke

JohnH and Peter (Luxford), thanks for the scan info. I think that to avoid messing this thread around, and because of the likely image data size, it might be better to discuss this in email? Peter, I think you've sent me a PM to which I will respond shortly, cheers. Martynn, Thanks for explaining yo...

Luke

John, is there any interest in cleaning up that instruction book and making it more usable for printing? Below is an attempt. I expect you've got a better resolution scan (?) but you can get an idea of how it might come out... Update - the images below are now adapted from Peter's images. I do them ...

Luke

John, Thanks for the info. I'd not bothered to check the inductance of the secondary but will check that out with the suspect unit I've presently got. I would be interested to know what result you get from the LOPT tester. I think I know the one you're talking about, DS or somebody like that did a k...

Luke

Don, Please excuse me if it's of no use to you but here's a couple of similar views from a local car that appeared yesterday. Year is prob your 1919 equivalent so may not be the same (I've no idea of any differences!), but if you want any other views please let me know and I'll see what I can do. ce...

Luke

Thanks John, I appreciate the input as I'm flying blind a little on some of this. Fundamentals are all very well but there's nothing like experience in the field! Given what you say, and if it turns out to be a non-event (as it now seems likely to be) I may well leave the shorted turns function out,...

Luke

And one from a 1920 (I realise these are outside the year range for the tank, but assume it's useful for you throttle assy data?):

: 1920_throttle.jpg (49.71 KiB) Viewed 864 times

Luke

A brief update. I made up a quick shorted turns tester. I was happy with the theory and it worked well enough in terms of what I'd expect, but in testing the Model T coils I wasn't sure it was reporting quite what I'd want (if it were faulty). Chris has been kind enough to lend me the coil that was ...

Luke

Martynn,

I'm not sure if you're still needing any throttle linkage data? Just in case here are three photos - two from a 1915, and one from a 1927 RHD vehicle

Luke

Don, is that photo of Dan Killicut's family? I thought I'd try a quick cleanup to see how it would come out... Sepia, as original but with a few areas 'fixed' and general spot repairs etc 16cdoora-4.jpg B&W 16cdoora-5.jpg A bit further on B&W 16cdoora-6.jpg And, cleaned up this way, back to sepia (o...

Luke

That's John's photo, not mine.

Sorry if I confused things by butting in, it's just that we get up a few hours earlier

I expect that John will post the requisite photo but if not I'll see if one could be arranged tomorrow.

Luke

Martynn, Yes that's right. I'm a little lower down than John but our RHD cars have the advance lever to the outside (RHS) and the throttle to inside of the cab (LHS). For me, with a LHD vehicle, I need to remember it that way (outside/inside) so I don't mess things up when swapping between LHD/RHD...

Luke

Matt, Thanks for the explanation, certainly it confused me :-) I felt it useful to to do a resistance test because I thought there could be a fault from leakage across the old coil box, or a leaky cap that might otherwise test ok. In order to grasp how it works just consider the cap as a resistor (l...

Luke

Thanks, appreciate the pointer anyway

Luke

Thanks Mark,

I saw that but the email address it referenced didn't seem to be a real one? Have you had success with it?

Luke

Recently I downloaded a file from Cimorelli's (very useful) site. A few days ago I spent several hours cleaning up the file contents incl lining up pages and generally improving its legibility (particularly for printing). As thanks and in the spirit of their generosity I would like to contribute it ...

Luke

Thanks Colin, I was interested to find out more, unfortunately it turns out the URL mentioned in the article no longer works, however these two provide some further detail and several links to other Ford related data: http://leddy.uwindsor.ca/archives/ford-motor-company-canada-limited-1904-1971 http...

Luke

Chris, The faulty coil showed a low current draw in the 'FACT', and IIRC it had a reasonably high SD. In the HCCT it was also erratic, but it showed a particularly high averaged current. These issues continued after several attempts at setting the coil, including a new set of points. Although not a ...

Luke

A brief report on a couple of useful things that arose today. The first is that I was able to try out the tester on some other coils (thanks Chris), and we later tried some setup by the tester in a car. Qualitatively the car went at least as well as it did with coils set on the HCCT. Coils set up on...

Luke

So my (work) year has started already, meaning I have less time to mess with T stuff :( Fortunately I'd written a rudimentary function for the capacitor value and coil-box leakage tests I was interested in. This forms part of v0.95 of the main code, which I've yet to complete and release. However fo...

Luke

Matt, Yes, I don't know what it is about electronic projects but they're the messiest things around! I've taken aeroplanes to pieces (and put them back together!) that never seems to generate the same amount of cr*p :roll: Good job with the code. You're now at the point where I was/am wrt to connect...

Luke

I had occasion to test four coils this morning. Given the intended mode of these, and the interest I had in operational voltage I did a quick comparison at two discrete voltage inputs. All four coils were set to fire at Mean 3.31-3.33 msecs at 7V. One a multi-fire test of 50 cycles at an equivalent ...

Luke

Chris, No, the ramp time for the coils increases with reduced voltage, as I think one could expect. I can imagine Ron's comment was due to some exasperation over a particularly recalcitrant coil? Personally I think the coil operation is reasonably logical and predictable, it's just that they're not ...

Luke

I was going to code in the capacitor tester today but got sidetracked for several reasons. One of these was that, in wanting to make this easy for people to replicate I'm not switching the coils the way I would do it personally (using a FET), rather I'm using a module that essentially just requires ...

Luke

Just in case anyone downloaded the code from last night I've just now replaced it with a minor version number update (rather than post it all again)...

Luke

John, Thank you, that's very helpful - your trace seems to me the epitome of what I'd thought a good coil would look like, with the possible exception of the plateau time, and with no further spikes I expect the tester will be reporting just what the trace shows. A couple of things arise. Having re-...

Luke

Perhaps time for brief recap on the tester. Remember this came about because I was having trouble with my T and had thought it might be the coils. As it happened it wasn't, but by the time I determined that I'd started down the track of making a tester to check the coils out. I'd never seen a HCCT f...

Luke

As I understand it, in America and places with Left-hand drive (crank goes clockwise) you jack up the left rear wheel. In England, Australia, etc. where they have Right-hand drive (crank turns counter-clockwise) you jack up the right rear wheel. Jeff, Actually it's much easier for us down here - we...

Luke

Matt, My apologies, the screenshot of the tester switched output had some different code in the Arduino, which is why it was showing 100msec period (I'd been away for the day and forgot I'd been messing with it the night before). Using the code as is up on the site presently the period shows up as 5...

Luke

John Housego, Thanks for the update, I'm pleased the intermittent misfiring issue was easily found and rectified - at least it wasn't a bug in the code! I'm sorry but I've a few versions of the code floating around however I think the '66' figure should appear in the code twice (once in the single_t...

Luke

John, I'm pleased to see you've got it running and have some results, thanks for posting! A couple of things to note: Since you're using a 20A module (which I agree is probably the better of the three) you'll need to make a minor alteration to a couple of lines of the code, if you haven't already. T...

Luke

Tom, Hopefully someone else with more experience on this will respond (John H, Mike K?), but FYI I did check the inductance of the two coils I've got and I was surprised to see that they were markedly different. As I recall one was something like 198uH whereas the other was up around 250uH or so - t...

Luke

Matt, Yes, I appreciate the incongruence in putting up such plots etc while working on 100+ y.o. tech (I'm not sure exactly how your wife put the statement but... :lol: ) Good to see your calcs, hopefully you'll get some of the detail you're looking for in return. Just one thing though - I don't thi...

Luke

Mack,

Does it present the same problem on both battery and magneto? I ask simply because you could probably isolate part of the electrical system as a cause by trying both feeds...

Luke

JB, thanks for the link, I would much prefer to adjust the coils 'nicely' as is described there. However I'm not quite ready to 'fix' this faulty coil yet. For the purposes of making and testing the tester it's potentially more useful to have a faulty/erratic coil than a good one. So I think I'll st...

Luke

jb, Matt, I've just emailed you a couple of datasets from two multi-fire tests. These include the raw data from each sensor sample over time, and a conversion to real-world current. I've not broken the individual firings down but It should be clear where they start and stop. There are 150 samples pe...

Luke

Chris, I like your explanation of the coil operation, and the due reminder of what this is all about! You've touched on something that I'd be contemplating for a while - the tension on the points. It'd seemed to me, between the few coils I'd handled, that this could be somewhat variable, and that th...

Luke

Given Matt's concern over the CT variation in output, and following on from something I'd been working on, I took the tester over to Robert's place today and we did some comparative measurements. I had remembered that I had an ACS712 30A current module that was suitable to use with the Arduino and c...

Luke

JB, thanks for the clarification, I understand now what it is you want to see wrt the RMS current measure methodology of the HCCT vs the 'time to fire' method of an electronic tester. I'll need to give it some thought. While I can see it'd be interesting to directly compare/correlate the two methodo...

Luke

John Housego, That's good news, and I'm sorry to have been instrumental in the initial problem! I should probably have made it clearer that the 100 ohms was a nominal value, and that one should use the data sheet for whatever CT is used in order to fit the right burden resistor. I see in the data yo...

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