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| | | Forums66 Topics128,026 Posts1,055,405 Members48,422 | | Most Online14,466 Apr 26th, 2026 | | AD Chevy Trucks Over 6,000 pictures Brad Allen has an awesome collection of Chevrolet factory pictures that he has set up from film strips. Check them out!
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on the Internet for over 30 years! and not clogged down with Ads! Again, thanks! | | | | Joined: Mar 2014 Posts: 4,479 Moderator, Electrical Bay | | Moderator, Electrical Bay Joined: Mar 2014 Posts: 4,479 | The condensers won't care about voltage, but if the condensers were made in the 50s, 60s, 70s or even the 80s, beware---please buy yourself a good handheld meter and test before using. Every single one of these was made using the "foil wrapped" method. Here's what that means: you have a long strip of foil and you have a dielectric compound which is either a liquid or gel. The dielectric was painted on the top surface of the foil and a machine spins it into a coil (which then becomes a cylinder). That cylinder is put into a small tin or aluminum canister and one end connects to the canister becoming the ground connection. The other end connects usually with a spring to the wire connection (to the points). Honestly this is technology of the 1920s. These are marginally accurate if built properly (and that hasn't happened on this troubled planet of ours for a long, long time) and inaccurate if built haphazardly. When they start failing, the internal connection becomes hit/miss and the capacitance value could literally be anything at all or nothing.
Why were we always told to change the condenser with each change of points? Because the old condensers were cheap and they didn't last long. The heat of the engine caused the dielectric in them to dry out and this caused them to internally fail and guess what that did? Yep...it caused your points to fail much faster.
I realize finding a source of NOS American-made condensers might sound attractive and fun and even like discovering buried treasure, but let's say you found some cases of condensed milk made in the 70s. Would you drink it or use it in baking recipes? Of course not. The condenser is nothing but a capacitor with a different name. Just like condensed milk. At the heart it is milk which has been processed. Today's capacitors are so many light years ahead of the capacitors made in the 1920s and 1930s there is truly no comparison at all. In the 1930s my late uncle used to make these capacitors (and resistors) which were used in early radios. Many people did this and it was a cottage industry which provided pocket change. Lunch money. Today the production of capacitors is all done in clean rooms by machines so precise you can hardly believe the accuracy they achieve. In my opinion the finest ones made come from America and Germany.
~ Jon 1952 1/2 ton with 1959 235 | T5 with 3.07 rear end
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