Re: Hood Ornament

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

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

   I do not think this would be difficult at all.  The first coil I ever 
built was operated from a car battery and used no ground.  I just tied the 
bottom of the secondary and one side of the primary to the negative post of 
the battery.  Why not just attach that negative post to the car body?
    This was a very small coil that only produced a 2 - 3 inch spark, but 
could have easily been designed to produce longer sparks.  It was operated by 
a crude buzzer interrupter made from a normally closed relay which powered a 
car coil to charge the primary cap.  The plans for this coil came from John 
Couture's TC desing manual.   
    The only thing about that design I didn't like was that the relay would 
burn up and would need to be replaced too often.  I was thinking a diode 
should be placed across the contacts to alleviate the spark from the 
inductive kick of the car coil.  I did try some kind of capacitor/resistor 
suppressor, but it didn't work. Perhaps one of the solid state designs would 
be better to use instead of the relay buzzer.  
     Other than that difficulty,  the little coil worked fine.  Perhaps it 
could even be mouted on the car using a magnetic base like a CB antenna mount 
so it could be removed when not in use.
Mike

> "i" don't think the grounding problem would be that terrible to overcome.
>  Maybe a drag chain or a little creative tire belting.  Not like we are
>  talking a giant pig system here...  The car body may do the ground plan
>  trick just fine with a little thought.  Perhaps a dual coil that really
>  needs no grounding...
>  
>  One would almost have to build it all up and do some testing, but I think
>  the shock off the car body could be fixed as long as it was understood.
>  Perhaps a little gizmo that would not fire the coil under 15 MPH...  I
>  would think that a driver that avoided running over the near people with
>  the car could also avoid shocking people holding onto the car...
>  
>  Cheers,
>  
>   Terry