Why it hurts so much

You know how much it hurts when you get shocked by a HT lead on an engine?

Pretty powerful sparks. Jumping 1/2" gap from lead to top of plugs, and engine is running. Great way to check if sparks are breaking down on a misfiring engine. Thought it was quite neat.

As I recall from my school days, it takes 20,000 volts to jump 1 cm in dry air. It is hard to judge the gap there, but I would guess it is between 1 and 2 cm. That's enough to make you jump.

One of my instructors in the Navy electronics technician school liked to say, "It isn't the shock that kills you. It's the protruding objects on the far bulkhead."

I think these coils produce about 40kv from memory. The gap is 0.5", so about 13mm.

Net result of the test though, coils are good. Time for a new carb at the cost of several hundred $, glad I'm not paying.

ghautz we must have gone to the same e school. I had a guy who worked for me on my ship who decided not to ground the anode on a OSC console CRT and got bit with his head in there and ended up needing 14 stitches in the back of his head. He never forgot after that. LOL