Greenpea needs help

[bullie]

I picked up my first "real" antique outboards from a club member a week or so ago, a 1949 Light 4 and a 1950 TN 26. When I bought them he said the Light 4 would run so, naturally, I haven’t touched that one. I cleaned 66 years of grime and dirt dauber nests off of the TN 26 and now I am fairly certain it was some sort of pale green color when new. Anyway, compression is even at about 70 lbs on my gauge, no spark, and the carb was full of mud from the dirt daubers. I have the carb cleaned and sealed my first cork float. I used super glue. Hope that works. The problem is spark at this point.

I have some sort of electrical learning disability that I battle every time I work on an ignition system so please bear with the slow kid.
What I have done.
Cleaned and set the gap to .20 on the points
cleaned connections on points, condensers, and grounds and the connector on the ends of the spark plug wires. made them all shiny.
I ohmed out both coils. To my understanding both windings checked out good on each coil.

My first impulse is to replace the condensers but I don’t even know if they are available. Often, my first impulse costs me money I did not necessarily need to spend.

I am as green as the motor I am working on so any help is greatly appreciated.

[frankr]

Those magnetos were made before OMC learned how to make them to last only 5 years. The no-spark problem almost (usually) always can be cured by proper cleaning of the breaker points. By that, I mean remove them from the motor and take them apart. Pay attention, and do not lose any of the small insulators. Do one set at a time so you have a sample of how they go together.

OK, so you have them apart. Now polish each contact individually so it is smooth and shiny bright. Reassemble and set gap to .020" at widest opening. Give them one final cleaning with a piece of lint-free paper drawn between the contacts. Tell ya what–I’ll bet you will have spark.

As for the condensers, yes they are available, part #300153. But even though you test them and they come up as "bad", the stupid things work anyway.

[bullie]

Will do. I admit going about the points cleaning "half-azzed" as my dad would say. I removed them from the motor and used fine sandpaper on them and cleaned them with lint free paper soaked in acetone, but I did not disassemble them because I had never seen a set like that before and was a bit worried about screwing them up somehow.

I will take them apart, clean them, and check back.

[bullie]

Ok FrankR, I did what you said and guess what? I have spark.

Now for the weird part. I am turning the flywheel with my cordless drill and I noticed that one wire gives spark at a lower rpm than the other, nothing really strange about that but as I increased the rpms the first wire to start firing stops firing completely. Once the other wire starts it keeps popping however fast I turned it. Any ideas?

[frankr]

I don’t have the slightest idea. But I’m wondering points’ gap (???)

[bullie]

It’ intermittent at best I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_ysKrw-iDI

[bullie]

I reset the points at .20 again. Same intermittent spark.

[ausob-collector]

Bullie,

My guess is bad spark plug leads… They quite possibly have deteriorated in the 50ish years since it was new.

Try putting new ones in and that may solve your intermittent spark.

Good luck

Cheers
BP

[collectorinspector]

Ground one lead and check spark on the other………then swap over.

Depending on config of coil may give you an idea.

Just Saying Aye.

BnC

[steveh]

I’ve had issues with these motors where one side would spark well, but the other side wouldn’t. It’s a bit time consuming, but you start swapping parts from the "good" side to the "bad" side. You have a coil, a point assembly, and a condenser. Move the coil. Does the problem move? Move the point assembly, etc. That will identify the bad component, if any. Sometimes everything just works and something was loose somewhere. One time I really wrestled with one and it turned out to be a loose kill-wire that would intermittently ground out.

These are excellent running motors and are a lot of fun. Keep at it!

[Author]

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