Author Topic: Lucas K2F Armature  (Read 2765 times)

Offline Swarfcut

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Oct 2018
  • Posts: 2201
  • Karma: 54
Lucas K2F Armature
« on: 17.05. 2020 09:32 »
 Having a look at a surplus bare magneto armature, which passes the first test.....does the points taper still fit, is the earth track smooth? So, on to the next basic test....continuity on the LT side of the coil, OK so far.

 Now we come to the HT side, there is nothing between the HT spike and either LT lead.   The armature bobbin section is already split from the ends, shagged condenser removed so easy access to the wiring into the coil.

 Now HT is funny stuff, so the question is "Can I wire up a low voltage supply, external condenser and spark gap to test this coil, or should the HT winding show some continuity when tested with a cheap multi meter?  It may appear to have infinite resistance, when in fact it would work under different simulated  working conditions.   Windings are good, no sign of mechanical or chemical degradation, looks too good to condemn without a fair test.

 Swarfy

Online groily

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Jul 2007
  • Posts: 1844
  • Karma: 31
    • www.brightsparkmagnetos.com
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #1 on: 17.05. 2020 11:08 »
Mornin' Swarfy,
Really, you should see several thousand ohms from spike to either LT lead on a bare coil. About 0.6 across the low tension tails. Most often, the HT will be around 5000. Some may be a tad less, others up to 6500 on some original factory ones, probably C versions. Most rewinds are done to about 5K, although over here in France I have seen fairly wild variations depending on the recipe used by previous repairers for the turns ratio primary:secondary and the wire gauges.
A cheap meter - or an expensive one for that matter! - ought to show the continuity clearly. Assuming the ends of the leads and the spike are clean, if it's Open Line / Infinity then there is a break in the HT winding somewhere, pretty well for sure.
That said, it may actually spark quite well on test, as the spark will hop across a small internal break and come out looking surprisingly healthy and - quite often - without consuming too much current to do it. If you had an ammeter on your test set-up, you could see what it took  . . . A good one should deliver a decent spark across the Lucas spec 5.5mm three point gap at no more than 2 amps of applied current up the low tension side, using a make-and-break. If you were able to spin the mag and determine the speed, it should work from about 130rpm using those test gaps (cold & fully advanced, if manual). And it should also work as a bare coil with no more than, say, a 10%ish increase in required current when hot (around 50°C for test purposes) - when it will also need a few more rpm (150-160 ish) if testing it dynamically.
But even if it does all of that, if there is a break in continuity, it's a one way street sadly as the gap inside gets bigger with erosion, so even if on test it seems OK, it would be a brave man who'd cross a desert with it!
Bill

Offline Swarfcut

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Oct 2018
  • Posts: 2201
  • Karma: 54
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #2 on: 17.05. 2020 12:03 »
     Thanks Mr G.  Just as I suspected, but hey ho, ready for a bit of experiment. LT resistance is close to your quoted figure, so worth a go. Take your point about long term reliability, and what goes on deep inside but it will be interesting to see if it can be coaxed back to life.

   Off piste maybe, but was recently challenged to fix a reluctant Briggs and Stratton mower engine  fitted with the infamous Magnetron Coil. This  is a one piece ignition unit, laminates, coil, integral plug lead and cap. No ignition points, it's triggered by magnets on the flywheel. Dead as a door nail electrically, but with the plug cap off, measured quoted resistance from plug lead to mounting plate, and when refitted, it sparked. Turns out that plug cap contains a hidden suppressor, obviously this was open circuit.

   So if you've no sparks, try it with the plug cap removed to expose the central conductor before you punt a new ignition unit. Takes a bit of devious manipulation to get the boot off and remove the inner cap, it's crimped in place, but as it doesn't work anyway, have a go.

 Swarfy.

Offline RDfella

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Aug 2017
  • Posts: 2193
  • Karma: 15
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #3 on: 17.05. 2020 16:41 »
Those B&S ignition systems are rubbish. Need a magnifying glass and a dark night to see the spark from one of those (if it even has one). In similar vein, last weekend my son came around to start the project bike for me (right hip's not great at present). No sign of life whatsoever, so checked the sparks - not great. Discovered the new plug caps had resistance, when they weren't supposed to. I avoid suppressed caps on magneto ignition as they make starting more difficult. Also, they can damage a magneto - I quoted an article on this not so long ago. Anyway, the project non-start turned out to be stale petrol - had turned a browny yellow colour. It was no more than a month since buying that lot, so the quality must be getting worse. In looking for alternatives I found one can buy petrol from garden machinery people that will last a couple of years or more. Aspen or something, but at £4.7 a litre think I'll give it a miss.
'49 B31, '49 M21, '53 DOT, '58 Flash, '62 Flash special, '00 Firestorm, Weslake sprint bike.

Online groily

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Jul 2007
  • Posts: 1844
  • Karma: 31
    • www.brightsparkmagnetos.com
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #4 on: 17.05. 2020 17:53 »
Oh the joys of mowers Swarfy! Close to my heart, or should I say a pain at the other end!
But, having managed to bust my big mower the other day at exactly the wrong time of year in a place where grass literally grows in front of your eyes, where there's a lot of it and I haven't got a sheep (and with normal parts & services not being available during strict lockdown) in desperation I pressed into service an ancient 3.75 bhp Briggs&S engine which had sat in a wet corner of a wet shed for a good 10 years  . . . and to its huge credit, having bolted it onto an engineless base lurking in another corner of shed and found a suitable-length blade in yet another, blessed it with a drop of fresh oil etc,  it went after a few pulls (and a few syringes of neat fuel through the carb) A mate here said 'that suppressor, it'll be dead as the proverbial parrot' or the French equivalent - but in fact it seems to be still living and I haven't even taken the plug out to look at it.
A minor miracle given that me and mowers, we're just not good mates at all.
Maybe your armature will play ball too!

Right, time for another blast on a bike - the joy of being able to go out at will again. Been doing nothing much bar riding around with an insane grin this past week since our rules were relaxed! But I'm rather sad about all the cancelled events, same as most of us I guess. Not enough active riding years left (even with a good covid-free tail wind) for these lost pleasures not to matter, with my 50th anniversary of obtaining a licence coming up next year. Where havethose years gone?
Bill

Offline RDfella

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Aug 2017
  • Posts: 2193
  • Karma: 15
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #5 on: 17.05. 2020 22:30 »
"Not enough active riding years left (even with a good covid-free tail wind) for these lost pleasures not to matter, with my 50th anniversary of obtaining a licence coming up next year. Where havethose years gone?"
Agree - 56yrs for me - took my test in a 5t truck to get 'all groups' in one go. Can't get HGV at 17 these days, it's a right palava. Gave up the HGV part when I hit 70 as it was costing me over £60 a year just to keep it on licence.
'49 B31, '49 M21, '53 DOT, '58 Flash, '62 Flash special, '00 Firestorm, Weslake sprint bike.

Offline Speedy

  • Moving Up
  • **
  • Join Date: May 2020
  • Posts: 20
  • Karma: 1
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #6 on: 21.05. 2020 21:03 »
Mornin' Swarfy,
Really, you should see several thousand ohms from spike to either LT lead on a bare coil. About 0.6 across the low tension tails. Most often, the HT will be around 5000. Some may be a tad less, others up to 6500 on some original factory ones, probably C versions. Most rewinds are done to about 5K, although over here in France I have seen fairly wild variations depending on the recipe used by previous repairers for the turns ratio primary:secondary and the wire gauges.
A cheap meter - or an expensive one for that matter! - ought to show the continuity clearly. Assuming the ends of the leads and the spike are clean, if it's Open Line / Infinity then there is a break in the HT winding somewhere, pretty well for sure.
That said, it may actually spark quite well on test, as the spark will hop across a small internal break and come out looking surprisingly healthy and - quite often - without consuming too much current to do it. If you had an ammeter on your test set-up, you could see what it took  . . . A good one should deliver a decent spark across the Lucas spec 5.5mm three point gap at no more than 2 amps of applied current up the low tension side, using a make-and-break. If you were able to spin the mag and determine the speed, it should work from about 130rpm using those test gaps (cold & fully advanced, if manual). And it should also work as a bare coil with no more than, say, a 10%ish increase in required current when hot (around 50°C for test purposes) - when it will also need a few more rpm (150-160 ish) if testing it dynamically.
But even if it does all of that, if there is a break in continuity, it's a one way street sadly as the gap inside gets bigger with erosion, so even if on test it seems OK, it would be a brave man who'd cross a desert with it!

Hello all, I have just joined this forum. But have owned a A10 for over 40 years, but not been able to ride it for most of that time. The first thing that I have noticed is the amount of spare parts and accessories that you can buy now for the A10 that was not around 40 years ago.
I can remember reading somewhere about using a 3 volt battery  and a ammeter to test these coils, but cannot remember the wiring diagram for doing this. I think it was In a lucas service sheet for the K2F. If anyone can put together the wiring diagram with the ohms resistance for the coils that would be a great help,for us all.

Offline Swarfcut

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Oct 2018
  • Posts: 2201
  • Karma: 54
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #7 on: 21.05. 2020 22:20 »
   Speedy, My two recommended sources for any information and parts for Lucas Ignition are Priory Magnetos and Brightspark Magnetos. The latter has online information freely available to enable you to test your magneto. Just look in the library section, Lucas workshop manuals are all there.

 40 years in the shed? A mere ripple on the millpond of life!! Head over to the intro section and tell us how you fell into this sad affliction.

 Welcome to the Forum.

 Swarfy.





 

Offline a10 gf

  • Global Moderator
  • Wise & Enlightened
  • **
  • Join Date: Sep 2006
  • Posts: 3181
  • Karma: 57
  • West Coast, Norway & Alpes Maritimes, France
    • A10 GF
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #8 on: 21.05. 2020 22:41 »
I can remember reading somewhere about using a 3 volt battery  and a ammeter to test these coils, but cannot remember the wiring diagram for doing this. I think it was In a lucas service sheet for the K2F. If anyone can put together the wiring diagram with the ohms resistance for the coils that would be a great help,for us all.

Try search, lots of stuff to be found, this may be useful:

> https://www.a7a10.net/forum/index.php?topic=8138.0
> https://www.a7a10.net/forum/index.php?topic=1375.msg9797#msg9797

& btw, am still a little proud of my spark pictures > https://www.a7a10.net/forum/index.php?topic=1412

Now, waiting for some words\pictures in "Introductions, Stories & Pictures" :O)


Stand with
A10 GF '53 My A10 website
"Success only gets you a ticket to a much more difficult task"

Offline Speedy

  • Moving Up
  • **
  • Join Date: May 2020
  • Posts: 20
  • Karma: 1
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #9 on: 23.05. 2020 17:56 »
Thank you for your help in finding the K2F magneto diagram for testing the coils with an ammeter and 2 volt battery.  This diagram is in the Lucas service sheet.
Now the armature of the K2Fmagneto is insulated  by the paper bearing packing washers, And if these washers have deteriorated the bearings become pitted and burnt by carbon particles from the carbon brushes, as the armature shorts out through the bearings.
So if you fit a aluminium magneto drive gear, doesn't  this also short out the armature,  and in turn reduces the magnetos output. And can burn out the secondary coil ?.
Has anybody got any ideas on this.
Ps
The Lucas service sheet for the k2f magneto can be found on this forum. And as far as I can make out the primary coil should be 5 ohms WITH 20SWG wire and 200 turns. And the secondary coil should read 5K ohms with 40 SWG wire and 11,000 turns. The condenser should have a value of 0.2 uf 400volts. The magnetos built in magnet dose not have a specific magnitization value, meaning it can be remagnitized with either N or S direction. But the K1F needs to be magnetized in the correct polarity.

Online groily

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Jul 2007
  • Posts: 1844
  • Karma: 31
    • www.brightsparkmagnetos.com
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #10 on: 23.05. 2020 20:17 »
Now the armature of the K2Fmagneto is insulated  by the paper bearing packing washers, And if these washers have deteriorated the bearings become pitted and burnt by carbon particles from the carbon brushes, as the armature shorts out through the bearings.

The reason for the insulator washers is to ensure that the return HT current passes by the earth brush, or brushes in cases where there is an auxiliary one on the cb unit, rather than partly or wholly via the bearings. Not really a carbon particle thing - just a case of avoiding using the bearings as a return path. You'll see on many a mag that the return current has worn a dimple, or 2 dimples, on the brass endpiece against which the earth brush bears  . . .  Having said that, there are many mags without insulated bearings, including some Bosch units. I have always regarded them as the Gold Standard among early magnetos at least - so I guess they thought a decent earth brush was 'good enough' back then.

So if you fit a aluminium magneto drive gear, doesn't  this also short out the armature,  and in turn reduces the magnetos output. And can burn out the secondary coil ?.
Nope. The armature's HT side is quite unaffected, so makes no odds to the most important bit - the HT coil. No short there, no reduction in performance of the coil. Many machines use steel or alloy drive arrangements anyway - AMC, Norton, some Beesas and Triumphs etc etc. If there were no earth brush, then the return current might work its way through the drive train as well as the  bearings to get back to base, but as there always is or should be a brush, not a problem.

The Lucas service sheet for the k2f magneto can be found on this forum. And as far as I can make out the primary coil should be 5 ohms WITH 20SWG wire and 200 turns. And the secondary coil should read 5K ohms with 40 SWG wire and 11,000 turns. The condenser should have a value of 0.2 uf 400volts. The magnetos built in magnet dose not have a specific magnitization value, meaning it can be remagnitized with either N or S direction. But the K1F needs to be magnetized in the correct polarity.

Sort of. The wire gauges in different mags vary, and I think rather in thousandths than SWG.  Primary resistance on K2Fs will be about 0.55 ohms; secondaries on K2Fs typically about 5000, but some were higher back in the day, and depending on the relative number of turns and the wire used you'll get some variations between winders.
Typical condensers will be between about 130 and 200nF. Good ones will be leakproof tested with 500v insulation testers to at least a Gigaohm. There are also important considerations with ref to their ability to handle current without fusing. Spikes in primary voltage can be surprisingly high 'at the break' and rolled paper capacitors rated in the 200-300v range would be at risk of damaging their self-healing properties. Bear in mind that voltage ratings are usually given in DC volts, but mag primary circuits are AC generators so you need to reduce the stated rating by about 0.7 (the inverse of I.41, the square root of 2) to get the equivalent AC rating.
On any multi cyl mag with a two-lobe cam, polarity isn't important, true. You get one neg and one pos spark whether you like it or not. Some people said in the old days you should swap your plugs over now and again to even the wear between them, as erosion patterns are different if the spark jumps from centre to earth electrode or vice-versa; I don't know anyone who does that! On singles, it's best to set things with a negative spark, either by magnetising in the sense that provides that, or by arranging the camring and contact breaker to get there.
Bill

Offline Speedy

  • Moving Up
  • **
  • Join Date: May 2020
  • Posts: 20
  • Karma: 1
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #11 on: 24.05. 2020 21:07 »
Thankyou Bill for explaining these points for me. It has been a  it confusing as to why paper insulation washers have been used to insulate the armature. So in reality you could run the magneto without the paper washers and secure the bearings with metal shims. Or would this mean the armature would be to ridged so it would vibrate, as the paper washers would cushion the armature.

Offline RDfella

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Aug 2017
  • Posts: 2193
  • Karma: 15
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #12 on: 24.05. 2020 21:51 »
Whilst on armature issues, we're told a cam ring should be set up so the points are opening near maximum flux. When rotating mine there is a definite pull as the armature approaches the magnet and another pull as it leaves. The second pull occurs a couple of degrees or so before the points open. Presumably this timing is correct, or do I need to move the cam ring? I ask because even on the rear cylinder of a vee twin I need all the spark I can get. Am currently modifying a distributor to 60* but completion will be some weeks away, especially as my pal's cylindrical grinder is playing up and I need it to grind the old cam off.
'49 B31, '49 M21, '53 DOT, '58 Flash, '62 Flash special, '00 Firestorm, Weslake sprint bike.

Online Bsareg

  • Valued Contributor
  • ****
  • Join Date: Mar 2016
  • Posts: 485
  • Karma: 4
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #13 on: 24.05. 2020 22:34 »
Points opening should occur just after maximum flux when the poles are changing (in theory). If you replace the paper shims with metal, you've provided a electrical path via the race and ball which could cause erosion if the earth brush fails.
Helston, Cornwall C11,B40,B44 Victor,A10,RGS,M21,Rocket3,REBSA

Online berger

  • Wise & Enlightened
  • *
  • Join Date: Nov 2017
  • Posts: 2911
  • Karma: 20
  • keith.uk 500sscafe.norbsa JDM honda 750fz
Re: Lucas K2F Armature
« Reply #14 on: 24.05. 2020 22:46 »
beat me to it, don't know a lot but my thought would be an effect like trying to weld the balls to the bearing rings