[Tom Endy]

Photo comparison of good and poor quality condensers. The one with three dots on the grounding strap is the good quality condenser. Most of the better suppliers carry them. I believe that the three dots are stake weld marks that attaché the strap. The other condenser has the strap soldered on.

In 30 years of driving a Model A almost daily I have experienced only one condenser failure and that was years ago when the engine overheated and the solder on the condenser strap melted and the strap sprung away from the base and the condenser lost its ground.

Condenser failure on a Model A is a thing of the past. The good quality condensers last forever. What I believe is being interpreted as condenser failure is actually an intermittent coil failure. There are poor quality reproduction coils around. What happens is the coil gets hot, the fine wires in the secondary winding expand with heat and short out. When the engine cools down the short goes away. However, by then the owner has installed a new condenser and is convinced that the problem was a bad condenser.

A couple years ago I bought a condenser checker on line that reads out the actual value. It was very inexpensive. It is called a Honytek model A6013L. Nominal condenser value is .287 micro farads

Tom Endy