<VV> Accel Coil

[RoboMan91324 at aol.com]

Smitty,

Just based on the fact that you have 5 failed Accel coils while the stock 
unit is still firing away after all these years would indicate that there is 
a problem with Accel coils of the type you bought.  Technically, the 
difference between a 1.5 and 1.4 ohm resistor in this application is minor.  On the 
assumption that you used the Accel resistor after the first failure, that 
would indicate that the resistor was not the problem.  I hope that at least 
some of those 5 were free replacements.  Otherwise, after 2 failures, I would 
not have "thrown good money after bad"  

Regarding the technician/customer service person, I have little tolerance 
with that kind of "shrug off."  I have run a number of Sales and Marketing 
Departments in my past.  These included customer service personnel.  Whenever 
I learned that someone in customer service was merely looking for excuses to 
lay off blame on the customer, I would retrain them or change their 
position to an area out of contact with customers.  Your techie was either 
incompetent, looking to get you off the phone as quickly as possible or had a 
misguided belief that it is more important to save the company the cost of a 
replacement coil than to do his job.  I feel that it is important to keep 
customers happy but, just as important, he should have had the coil returned for 
testing.  If there is a problem, it is best to discover it as soon as 
possible.  Otherwise, you lose customers in the near term and lose reputation and 
customers in the long term.

If I had a response like his, I would have insisted on speaking with his 
supervisor who might have been more helpful to you and possibly corrected the 
techie's poor response to you and future customers.  My opinion is that 
taking an issue like this up a level or two helps both you and the company.

Doc
1960 Corvette; 1961 Rampside; 1962 Rampside; 1964 Spyder coupe; 1965 
Greenbrier; 1966 Corsa turbo coupe; 1967 Nova SS; 1968 Camaro ragtop
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In a message dated 1/29/2010 9:00:25 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
virtualvairs-request at corvair.org writes:


> Message: 1
> Date: Thu, 28 Jan 2010 21:41:28 -0800 (PST)
> From: Smitty Smith <vairologist at verizon.net>
> Subject: <VV> 
> To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
> Message-ID: <295215.31886.qm at web84204.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
> 
> Smitty says;  I am a little slow to learn some times so it takes me a 
> while to get some things through my skull.  I have finally had it with Accel 
> Super coils.  I have tried to get through to somebody in the company to 
> reason with them but it seems acces is blocked.  Well I can't get to them but I 
> think I can reach about 500 people right here.  When I first built Spike I 
> chose to go with the primative but highly reliable and easy to diagnose 
> points system.  I knew I would need lots of fire to keep the flame going under 
> big boost so I got an Accel Super coil.  About a year later I had a coil 
> primary burn out.  Maybe it's my "Bad" I thought so I checked the circuits 
> and ballast resistor feeding the coil.  I was running a 1.5ohm ballast 
> rather than the 1.4 that came with it.  I was able to get through to a 
> (Quote)Technician(Unquote) that let me know in no uncertain tearms that it was my 
> fault for not using the supplied Resistor.  I figured, what the hay, I need 
> to get on the track so I bought another coil.  This scenario was played 3 
> more times when I was running under normal operation around town.  Each time 
> I took the blame.  I moved the coil off the engine where it was getting 
> quite a bit of vibration and (could be) heat.  I moved it to an upright 
> position in case the coil wire wasn't staying submerged in oil.  I changed balast 
> resistors again droping the primairy input voltage to 6.1 in the run 
> position.  A couple of days ago I was on my way home after about 15 miles of 
> interstate "when the top of the engine should have been nice and cool" and 
> another coil primary failed.  That was number 5 and I will take every 
> opportunity from now on to advertise that Accel Supercoils are Crap.  They are 
> garbage.  Spike is happily running around now with a 40 year old GM coil which 
> I suspect would last forever.  That won't hack it on the track though under 
> heavy boost.  Well' see what we gonna do.