8: My magneto sparks OK, Can you just check it over for me? Again, we prefer not to. You know it sparks so you have probably already done a 'quick test'. If it does spark, it shows that it works now but there is no guarantee that it will work a week/month/year later so there is no point in us doing a ‘quick test’. To do a 'long test', we would have to take it apart and clean everything up. Then we would put the coil in the oven so we could test it when really hot. If it passes that test we would then have to reassemble it all. In all conscience we couldn't do that without having checked over bearings, slip ring, pickups, rotor arm, distributor cap, fibre/plastic gears, overhauled the points, probably replaced the condenser and so on and so on. Once it's all back together we would remagnetise it and put it on test for an hour's running. In other words, it would be a complete overhaul with the exception of rewinding the coil which is the very part most likely to fail further down the road. In both cases, our name is then attached to the magneto......
We have done 'long tests' on a few magnetos in the past. Some of those magnetos subsequently failed - always because of the coil - and on one occasion, more than twelve months had passed before it failed. In every case we had a dissatisfied customer claiming they thought we had 'done the mag' - despite having explained at the time that we could not, would not, guarantee the coil. We don't like dissatisfied customers - our reputation is very important to us - so we no longer offer 'check overs'. BACK TO TOP