|
Lost My Spark
If Editor Campbell doesn’t like my column this month, he’s only got himself to blame. It was Himself who forwarded me a long list of Lucas jokes: you know, the ones about Lucas-made refrigerators being the reason Brits drink “warm” beer; and the Lucas headlight switch marked “off—dim—flicker.” They do the rounds on the internet as regularly as a Brittany Spears paparazzi faux pas.
Having grown up with European automotive electrics, I’ll admit it did seem awfully difficult for some equipment makers to reliably move a few volts from one place to another. But of those I became familiar with, Lucas components were certainly the most durable, reliable and readily serviceable. I won’t list the also-rans, except to say that if Joe Lucas was the Prince of Darkness, his Italian cousin Signor Marelli was certainly the King!
Maybe Europeans were a little slow on the uptake where electricity was concerned. I can remember my grandmother’s house on Linkfield Road, Isleworth being illuminated by coal gas well into the 1950s. And as late as the 1930s, motorcycle lighting was frequently offered only as an optional extra. Even then, if you chose that option, you may well have received a steel can of carbide crystals, a drip-feed water bottle, a couple of hoses and two acetylene lamps! By contrast, Indian offered comprehensive electrical equipment on its bikes—including electric start—as early as 1913.
My experience of automotive electrical components came about mostly through a 1955 Ford Anglia and a couple of Minis. Inevitably, buying vehicles that were many years old already meant I soon became intimate with their parts. Starter motors jammed and shredded their Bendix springs (in the days before pre-engaged starters); dynamos wore out their bushes; contact breakers eroded; distributors cracked and shorted; capacitors and batteries died; coils fried; and voltage regulator contacts welded themselves closed, turning the dynamo into a smoking electric motor. On the plus side, such items were then readily serviceable, and most of their internals could be replaced cheaply. Of those in use, Lucas items seemed the most robust and best engineered. Failures were often due to deficiencies in the vehicle and the environment rather than Old Joe’s products …
Like the notoriously leaky Mini crankshaft seal, which allowed engine oil into the clutch housing so that the starter gear would become coated in a gooey mastic of clutch dust, stopping it from sliding on its shaft and engaging with the starter ring gear. Or the placement of the Mini’s distributor on the front of the engine, so that driving through even a modest puddle would drown the sparks. Or siting the electro-mechanical voltage regulator on the rear fender of many British bikes where it easily became waterlogged … I’m sure many readers can cite their own examples.
When the inevitable Lucas maintenance became necessary, the components were typically easy to dismantle and repair, unlike many of the flimsier items from Wipac, Miller and the rest. A Lucas dynamo, for example, could be completely dismantled and refurbished in The Shed, even by me. Reconditioning Lucas contact breakers required just four readily available tools: a screwdriver; your girlfriend’s nail file; a cigarette paper; and a piece of cardboard from a pack of smokes. You “dressed” the contacts with the file, used the cardboard to set the gap, then the cigarette paper to set the timing: if you put a cigarette paper between the “points” when they were just opening, the paper would fall out. Brilliantly simple!
Lucas pioneered alternator electrics, too. From the early fifties, many British bikes were fitted with the Lucas RM series of maintenance-free, fixed-magnet AC generators. Unfortunately, solid state electronic components weren’t as robust then as they are today, and many bike makers eschewed germanium rectifiers and zener diodes, making do with a crude system of charge voltage control that switched alternator coils in and out as the headlight was turned on and off. When reliable voltage control arrived, the Lucas charging system worked a treat.
The parsimonious nature of the British bike industry meant that the overall quality of bought-in components—Lucas electrics included—was always compromised. Even so, most of the Lucas components on my bikes, many more than 40 years old, still function perfectly. Alternator magnets deteriorate over time, of course, but that applies to modern magnets, too.
Lucas’s reputation in North America probably suffered most as a result of bodged repairs and off-brand replacement parts. Bullet connectors sold here, for example, are sized differently from the Lucas originals: OEM Lucas light bulbs had heavier filaments to withstand vibration (as do modern H-D brand bulbs). So if you substitute an oriental bulb designed for modern cars, don’t complain when it craps out.
And Lucas is still in business. Now part of Goodrich Corporation, Lucas Aerospace supplies equipment for military and commercial aircraft. Remember that next time you fly!
Finally, to fully appreciate the flavour and aroma of “real” beer, it needs to be at 55F, coincidentally the temperature of an English pub’s cellar. Of course, if your beer isn’t worth tasting, go ahead and freeze it.
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
