Make External Connections to Ignition Switch?

[wizechatmgr]

Short of deploying an airbag while your face is directly against it, precisely what danger?

[MrAl]

Short of deploying an airbag while your face is directly against it, precisely what danger?

Hi,

What do you think would cause that to deploy?

[wizechatmgr]

Short of deploying an airbag while your face is directly against it, precisely what danger?

Hi,

What do you think would cause that to deploy?

It requires power and a ground. Supply both, and you risk decapitation if your head is against it. That said, this is why nearly everyone recommends disconnecting the battery before starting electrical work.

Also never touch the output of a high voltage coil, such as those in the ignition -- those hurt at best, kill at worst.

[MrAl]

Short of deploying an airbag while your face is directly against it, precisely what danger?

Hi,

What do you think would cause that to deploy?

It requires power and a ground. Supply both, and you risk decapitation if your head is against it. That said, this is why nearly everyone recommends disconnecting the battery before starting electrical work.

Also never touch the output of a high voltage coil, such as those in the ignition -- those hurt at best, kill at worst.

Oh that's very interesting thanks for mentioning that.

As far as the spark is concerned (ha ha) i've been involved in design and testing of various types of electronic equipment over the past 50 years or more. I designed power converters that could put out 240vac three phase, various test equipment like a frequency counter, digital scope, RS232 four channel volt meter, and various microcontroller based projects like an IR remote control and real time clock/calendar and too many others to mention. So i understand voltage and current.
The thing that really stands out though after all those years is when a fellow worker in the lab one day connected a variac to a bank of electrolytic capacitors. The caps where something like 200v, 1000uf or something, and they had to handle a lot of power (possibly 10kwatts) so they were connected together with thick copper buss bars right across the top of each one. He turned down the variac just before turning it on to make sure it did not put out any voltage yet, then turned it on. The bank of capacitors all blew up sounded like a cannon went off. The caps blew their tops off and bent the thick copper buss bars. It was nuts. What happened was when he turned the variac down he actually turned it up instead, so the variac was at full voltage which could have been 300 volts AC and that's three phases too. That feeds a high current three phase rectifier that charges the caps and the caps are there for filtering. It was kind of funny too though.
These days i still play around with some electronic stuff like microcontrollers and various types of test equipment just not as much as i used to.

And while we are on the subject, i am now looking into testing the automobile engine using an oscilloscope. There are many tests we can do i wasnt aware of, including a relative compression test without needing a transducer. That's pretty amazing, and i dont know why i did not realize you could do that until now. I did check my charging system though with a scope a few years back, but there's so much more. The spark we were talking about has a unique pattern for any given car and if you know what to look for you can spot problems before they cause bigger problems. I was thinking of starting a thread on this because it's a really good troubleshooting technique.