British made magneto repair

[MMasa]

Can anyone recommend a good reliable source for rebuilding a British made magneto preferably here in the USA. It is a 1920's vintage unit that will be going on a late twenties BSA twin I'm working on.
Thanks
Mark Masa

[Cass]

You might want to try R & D Engineering Doug Wood in Boyertown,PA He specalizes in British Magneto repair. His e-mail is dougwood@netzero.net & his phone # is 610-369-7855. Very reliable & he has done several of our Magnetos with great results.
Cass

[sirhrmechanic]

Marks Magneto Service in Connecticut. They do our work on (English) Bosch, Watford, lucas, etc. Not the cheapest guy. Not the quickest turnaround guy. But he does absolutely the best magneto work we have found in years and we've tried them all.

I don't have a number handy, but you can Google him or drop me an e-mail and I'll find his number in the AM.

CHeers, Sirhr

[BoschZEV]

I don't repair magnetos for other people myself, but I wrote a very detailed description of my restoration of a 1920s vintage V-twin magneto (using the screen name Magnetoman) that you can find at:

http://www.britbike.com/forums/ubbth...=446733&page=1

If you go to that site you'll find a link to "Epilog" near the bottom of the first page. There I've described what I recommend people should look for when trying to find someone to properly restore their magneto. I don't make recommendations of magneto restorers because I would have to personally know their work to make such a recommendation. However, for what it's worth, I've never heard anything bad about Doug Wood's work. However, a number of bikes in the first Cannonball Rally had magnetos fail that had been restored by Marks. Still, if you want to be an informed consumer, read the 'Epilog' mentioned above.

[sirhrmechanic]

Hi BoschZEV:

Nice work on the Mag in Britbike. Thanks for sharing.

I am familiar with the bikes that went out in the Cannonball and some cars, too.... but let me share the 'backstory' just so folks can understand why I recommend Marks Magnetos without reservations...

Goes back to not long before the first Cannonball, the EPA/Obama administration changed the rules on use of lead in numerous automotive components made in the U.S.... including condensers. The company that Mark was using for magneto condensers, in San Francisco, sent him a batch of some 2000 special-order condensers which were of a new design and used no lead per the new EPA regulations. Under heavy load on a magneto these condensers failed. The new design of condenser was inadequate. Virtually all of them, failed, including the ones he used on cars... including some for us (none of which failed... but I'll get back to that). Apparently, the Bosch ZEV's used on the Cannonball were hit particularly hard. Mark had no idea what was causing the condenser problems until he talked with another supplier in Chicago-area who told him about the lead issue. He then had to source new "old-style" condensers in (you guessed it...) China where they still make condensers with lead that work fine in Magnetos. We aren't allowed to make them here in the U.S... but we can import all we want from China. (Don't get me started.)

Anyway, the lead-free designs do not work in mags... oh and virtually all condensers manufacturers are out of business in the U.S. because w.out lead in the foil inside the condensers... they don't work worth a darn. (Who is John Galt?)

The upshot of all this was that Mark "recalled" and repaired more than 200 magnetos thanks to that mess. Including a couple for our customers that had, at that point, had no issues. But probably would have. The whole fiasco almost put him out of business, but he stood behind his work and fixed the issues.

BTW, we've used virtually every major magneto rebuilder (for car work) we know of. For many years, Gordon Matson in NH was the best. But he had a bad stroke a few years ago and just never fully recovered his skills and it was a huge loss to the hobby. Others, I will not mention.

And I am certain there are those who have had mags from Mark go out and who think he is the devil incarnate. I'll just say, nobody is perfect and not everyone likes every supplier. But I can say without hesitation that he does great work for us and everyone we've sent to him. And, to add icing to the cake, he bailed us out just today w. a new cam for a Bosch FU6 Bentley Speed Six mag just this week.

Anyway, just my $0.02. Everyone has their favorites. Mark is currently ours. But I am always open to hearing about other talent, so don't hesitate to toss in other recommendations. And I thought folks would want, as Paul Harvey used to say, "The rest of the story."

Cheers and thanks again BoschZEV for the link. Nice stuff!

Sirhr

[BoschZEV]

the EPA/Obama administration changed the rules on use of lead in numerous automotive components made in the U.S.... including condensers.

He then had to source new "old-style" condensers in (you guessed it...) China where they still make condensers with lead that work fine in Magnetos. We aren't allowed to make them here in the U.S... but we can import all we want from China. (Don't get me started.)

and I thought folks would want, as Paul Harvey used to say, "The rest of the story."

I had heard this "explanation" given, but it doesn't make sense for several reasons. So, here's some more of "the rest of the story" to consider:

First, the physics reasons. The only place lead would have been used, and subsequently removed, from a line of capacitors appropriate for magnetos would have been from the solder used on the electrical leads of the condenser. The pollution issue of lead in solder was a well known one by the 1990s and significant efforts were already underway by the electronics industry back then to identify alternatives. Removing the lead from the solder on the leads made components more difficult to solder, so automated processes had to be modified to deal with this, but in the case of these magneto condensers it would have had no effect whatever on the functioning for quite fundamental reasons of physics.

Next, the political reasons why the "explanation" doesn't make sense. The interesting thing about it is it simultaneously gives the upset end user two (or three, or even four, depending on your political leanings) boogeymen to blame for the failures of the repaired magnetos: the EPA (plus Obama) and the Chinese (plus trade agreements). However, neither of these boogeymen is to blame. For over a decade the European Union has banned electrical devices using constituents like mercury and lead. Because of this ban mercury camera batteries disappeared from the market by 2000. Anyone who was still using a pre-1980s camera (like a Minolta SRT) at that time would remember that it had to be put up on the shelf for lack of a battery for the internal meter, until a zinc-air substitute providing the same voltage was developed. Since the EU has an economy the size of the U.S.'s, any capacitor manufacturer who continued making devices containing lead past the mid-2000s would have been frozen out of half the potential market even had the EPA not banned lead well before Obama became President. Also, both the EU and the pre-Obama EPA bans are on "the manufacturing and importation" of lead-containing components, so the boogeyman of unfair trade practices with the Chinese doesn't explain the failure of those magneto condensers either.

The most common reason for the failure of a substitute condenser is one with a too-low pulsed current rating was used. Any number of magneto repairers over the years have used such replacements because they didn't understand the importance of this factor, and countless repaired magnetos have failed as a result (although, quite often lasting a lot longer than one might expect given their inadequate specifications). I don't know if this was the case for the condensers Marks used in the failed Cannonball bikes, but I do know the failures were not caused by the EPA, Pres. Obama, or the Chinese. Also, it's important to add that I don't know if Marks is now using an appropriate condenser in his repairs.

p.s. A two-part article in 'The Antique Motorcycle' two years ago gave the part number of a Panasonic capacitor that had been extensively tested for use in magnetos. Unfortunately, that capacitor is now out of production, but the Panasonic site lists a replacement for it. However, if a magneto restorer simply used the recommended replacement Panasonic capacitor, as it might seem reasonable to do, it would soon fail in a magneto because it does not have the necessary high pulsed current rating. What this example means is that when components go out of production, as they inevitably do, and replacements are needed, there's a good chance problems will develop unless the rebuilder understands what he is doing at a deeper level than many rebuilders do.