rotary failure

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Cydesho-at-aol-dot-com>

Well, so much for my effort over the past week to get an srsg running for my 
TC. I got it all built, with the rotor and the electrodes and the synchronous 
motor. It seemed to be running really well, that is until I hooked it up to 
my coil. First of all, my safety gap began firing like crazy even though it 
was set at the same spacing it had been for my static airblast gap. Then I 
noticed that when the safety gap or the rotary gap would fire, my motor would 
kind of stall and jitter. I looked to make sure none of the high voltage 
wires were coming into contact with the motor or its wires. None seemed to be 
touching it, so I turned the gap back on and the motor started to sound a 
little bit funny even though I didn't have power running to the tesla tank 
circuit. Then thick white smoke began to billow out of the vent on the back 
of the motor. This was not just a little bit of smoke either, it was enough 
to fill my patio with a white cloud. I shut the power off. The motor was very 
hot so I had to wait a while to dismantle it. When I did, nothing seemed to 
be wrong with it. There were no burn marks, everything was just covered with 
a light layer of soot. Has anyone else out there experienced such a thing, or 
heard of it happening?
                                    Justin