I was driving the car last Thursday down town when the engine started to misfire accompanied by a few, rather dramatic back fires. I pulled over and the car would barely run at this point. I got out my tools and started in trying to figure out just what was up. After thinking a bit I figured it wasn't fuel starved (the backfire was the clue there) and after replacing the cap and rotor and checking the timing to no avail, I started eyeing the condenser. Luckily I keep a full set of tune up and rebuild parts so I swapped it out and all is better - in fact, much better! The car is much smoother and starts and runs better with the new condenser. It must have been dying a slow death for a while.
My question is how long are these suppose to last? The one that went bad (Bosch, green wire from one of our great parts outlets) was just over two years/12Kmiles old. I swapped it out when we drove the car back from Mass a couple years ago. I've had these go out on my old Beetles and it was the reason the car wouldn't start/run when I picked up the car.
I'll now be swapping it out with the points every spring and I'll always carry a nice fresh one in my bag just in case. Seems like they should last longer, no? I think the coil is a bit older (don't really know) but it is just fine. I will have a backup part for that too
I had a new blue 6V coil die like that too, while I was trying to synch the carbs on my 64C coupe. At one point I restarted the motor, and it ran for a short time and died. It would not restart. It took about 20 minutes of testing to determine that the spark was incredibly weak. Put in my 30-year-old black coil and everything was fine again.
I always carry a backup coil now, along with points, rotor, condensor, and plugs (and frequently a backup distributor).
Dave Wildrick
Houston, TX
#10230
64C coupe
65C coupe
I think it’s somewhat of a crap shoot on certain electrical parts. My 65C still has the black coil that was on the car when I bought it in 2000. My 64C has an older (probably from the late 80s or early 90s) faded blue coil that a friend gave me when the new one died; I repainted it blue. Neither of these has failed yet.
Bruce Baker told me several years ago that he observed that about 1 out of 9 new Bosch 6V blue coils would fail on the engine test stand while he was testing a newly rebuilt motor. So, maybe there was or is a Bosch quality control problem there. I haven’t tracked the lifespan of my condensors, but I think it may also be a rare event to have one fail.
Dave Wildrick
Houston, TX
#10230
64C coupe
65C coupe
In the future I will be asking vendors of such electrical parts about their warranties. If there are known Bosch failures on the order of 10%, vendors should be happy to return another part upon receipt of the bad one. Then the first thing you would do when receiving a "spare" is to put it on the car to test it, i.e. never assume a new part is reliable until it has been "burned in" for a few days. If you have two example of a part, both of which have been burned in (one in service and one spare) it seems like the chance of both failing on the same trip are remote.
Are Bosch parts being made in China or Malaysia now or something?
Brian
Welcome to the era of policy-based evidence-making.
I have only had one condenser die in 33 years of driving 356/ 912 cars. Two coils went bad...one after I had been using a CD ignition box in combo with a blue coil. Never had an old, original 6v coil go bad. Always a good idea to carry a few extras in the trunk.
Well, here is what I know about "Bosch" condensers. Bosch has their condensers currently made in Turkey. The failure rate (when tested new, doesn't meet specifications) is about 8 out of 10 fail. John Jenkins from 356 Carb Rescue did a batch test for us on the "Bosch Turkeys" and that was the approximate failure rate. These "non-complying" condensers will shorten the life of the points, causing problems described in the previous posts.
The unknown is when will the problems begin to surface and is the condenser at root cause. Also, how long do the points actually last with an "out of spec" condenser?
All unknowns.
We buy a lot of Bosch parts and their quality control, whether its spec failures or packaging errors, is a constant problem.
The cost of the condenser is about $7.00 retail, so keep a spare.
Just an FYI - Some informal testing was done with the Petronics ignition sets, 5 straight set tested at least 4 or more degrees off. Those retail at around $100.00!
Hope this background info was helpful.
ed
klasse356
Some things last a very long time, others last not so long, but nothing last forever.
Or its not a matter of "if", its a matter of "when".
When I was a VW service tech in the early 70's we always replaced them at the 6k service with the tune up, it was in the book that this was the service interval, I'm sure we threw out many good condensers but they were cheap and why take the chance.
I would stick with the service interval of 3k oil change, 6k full service ie: tune up, valve adjust.
Or every couple of years based on the miles driven.
That would be every year for me then. I do the major tuneup/service in the Spring and then late Summer, re-lube, oil, clean plugs, etc. I'll swap out the condenser in the spring when I do the points and rotor and not worry about it. Two years was just too long. We seem to average about 6K miles a year or more.
For what it is worth, the few failures I experienced were on two cars that were true daily drivers...about 20,000 miles per year, ( being conservative), 365 days per year, neither car ever garaged. This was in New York where we have extreme weather conditions ranging from just below 0 deg. Fahrenheit to a bit over 100 deg.
If you have the older condensers, just keep using them...the probabiity of failure is very slight, given my own experience.
I had the same problem yesterday after filling the gas tank. Car got into my driveway (good car!) and then started to splutter and die. All the symptoms of bad fuel or fuel pump delivery problems. No squirt from the tubes on the RH carbs suggested this may be the case, in part. Pumped some fuel through the lines and it was a clean as could be with no water evident. Good fuel flow both sides. Hmmmm. Tackled the RH carb and fixed a sticking lever on the accelerator pump with new parts, cleaned out the carb and measured the squirt volume and float levels - all good. Still ran like a dog.
So '90% of all fuel problems are electrical' ... coil is new and checked out fine on the meter. Points clean and connection to the lead from the distributor well isolated through the iron bodied BR18. Added a new primary lead to the distributor from the coil to be sure and checked the impedance of all the leads to the plugs. Still ran rough. New plugs fitted and pulled off the new(ish) condenser. Would not work to specifications at all! Changed that and all good again. Groan.
