Lucas RITA

A question about an observation. Plugs out to observe the spark. When I push the kill button I get a nice bright spark. When I kick the engine over, the spark is much dimmer. Is this normal for RITA? The engine works fine.
On a '72 750 combat engine, stock rectifier, original coils - no resistor pack, zener, blue can capacitor, new alternator and closed cell battery.

Thanks,

Some people used to wire up an unused button to give the coils a full 12 volts, so for starting purposes you could ramp up the spark. Normaly the coils are fed through a voltage regulator to accept only 6 volts.

Hope this helps

Richard

stockie1 said:

Some people used to wire up an unused button to give the coils a full 12 volts, so for starting purposes you could ramp up the spark. Normaly the coils are fed through a voltage regulator to accept only 6 volts.

Click to expand...

The Lucas RITA electronic ignition is wired similar to a Boyer Bransden with both 6V coils in series triggered by the amplifier box, so it isn't possible to "boost" the coil voltage.
http://www.britcycle.com/Manuals/333100RitaInst.pdf

Didn't get an answer to this. At some point I read the blue can capacitor can affect spark if it goes bad. Just tried disconnecting it and the spark is still the same. Bright spark when pushing the kill button, but dimmer spark kicking over the engine. It runs fine, just wondering why the difference.