[T3] Mysterious squareback condition.... need suggestions.

[Dave Hall]

The red coil was sometimes fitted to help starting problems - it was a 9V
(ISTR) coil, using an external ballast resistor for running on 12V that was
short-circuited by a wire from the solenoid connection.  That meant for
typical starting voltages, the coil was running at near its normal rating.
I have one somewhere but didn't save the ballast resistor from the scrap
car.  Not a great problem to sort something out if I ever use it.  I think
newer VWs have a resistive lead instead.  That's something to bear in mind
if you ever use one from a more recent scrap car.

Dave
UK VW Type 3&4 Club
====================

-----Original Message-----
From: type3-vwtype3.org-bounces at lists.vwtype3.org
[mailto:type3-vwtype3.org-bounces at lists.vwtype3.org] On Behalf Of Jim Adney
Sent: 27 January 2011 20:26
To: type3 at vwtype3.org
Subject: Re: [T3] Mysterious squareback condition.... need suggestions.

On 27 Jan 2011 at 10:48, James Lingenfelter wrote:

>    I've been doing some further research this morning, and determined 
> that if I get a new coil, I need to get the Bosch blue coil made in 
> either Spain or Brazil, that has the internal resistor. Apparently 
> there are various grades of Bosch blue coils, some of them being no 
> good. Never knew.

In the era where our cars came from, Bosch made 3 different groups of coils,
but there were several members of each group. 

Most of the OE coils were black, but there were clearly MANY different
versions of those. 

The Blue coils were "upgrade" coils meant to work with the standard
Kettering (points, condensor, coil) ignitions. There were several different
versions of those.

The Red coils were meant to work with various kinds of electronic ignitions,
and there were several different kinds of those, too.

I'm not surprised to hear that Bosch now makes fewer coil versions, but I'll
repeat the advise that you can't do better than find a good used OG black
coil for your car. I'm sure that they sometimes fail, but I've never seen a
bad one. 
Russ probably has, but he's seen a LOT more cars than the rest of us. Both
he and I have good used OE coils available.

--
Jim Adney
jadney at vwtype3.org
Madison, WI USA

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