a clean secondary is a happy secondary :^))

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Tesla729-at-cs-dot-com>

Hi all,

About a week ago I posted a letter about having problems with
racing sparks on a secondary that had previously not had this
problem. I thought that since I had taken off the breakout point,
that this may have allowed the secondary voltage to reach high
enough potentials that would cause the flashover along the sec
coil, since I had always ran it with a breakout point before. I just
wanted to thank everyone that responded to my posting and I
came to the conclusion that Dr. Resonance's explanation was
probably the cause. Dr. Resonance said that the secondary
coil had probably collected too much dust on it since the coil had
previously worked properly w/out the racing sparks. I tried tho-
roughly wiping down the secondary coil and the next time I
fired it (last night) there were no more racing sparks  :^)))) I
had never had the secondary flash over before from excess
dust on the surface but since my move last December, I do
cut materials (including metals) with my hacksaw in my garage
shop. And I do have to store my coil fairly close to where I do
my cutting :^0 So, all of you fellow coilers may ought to con-
sider wiping down your secondary coil with a clean dry cloth
as standard procedure before firing your coil, if you are not al-
ready doing so. Fortunately, I caught and stopped this problem
before it ruined my secondary coil.

Sparkin' in Memphis,
David Rieben