Green corrosion distributor cap

[Blackstack]

My Dad is always complaining about a green corrosion that keeps coming back after time and turns into a miss on his 450. He is sometimes able to clean it up and sometimes not and buys a new distributor. He just chalks it up as "they just don't make distributor caps like they used to" but I suspect something else is going on. Any ideas? He's running carbon core wires and I assume resistor plugs.

 

[khouse6]

on the older tractors, a , b , c , h , m and such. recommendation is for copper wires. it is said engine runs better on them.

 

[old]

Carbon core wires are very likely to be a big part of his problem he need true wire plug wires

 

[Haas]

Get a distributor cap that has brass contacts. It will cost 3 times more than the cheap ones with aluminum.

 

[DanMD]

I couldn't get my Super C to start this spring. It ran perfect all last year. I found my brass distributor cap was all covered in green corrosion as well. I swapped in a new cap and it fired right off. I looked at my other tractor with the same cap and it didn't have any of the green corrosion.

I am curious about this as well. I just overhauled the entire ignition system a year ago and it ran great all year, about 100 hours.

 

[David G]

Green is copper corrosion, white would be aluminum.

 

[Lucid]

Moisture getting inside the cap I'd vote.

 

[pete 23]

Gas, ozone given off from high voltage sparks. Not all components are created equal and gaps between rotor tip and cap contacts are wider, or longer, or shorter or who knows. Just a WAG.

 

[300guy]

The green usually comes from th4 oxidation of the copper in the brass inserts. Usually just scrape this material off with a knife or such and you should be good to go.