* The Original Anti-Theft Device - Lucas Electrics. I’ve seen multiple pieces where folks who own well-cared-for MGs and Jaguars wax rhapsodic about driving the cars to events on sunny Sundays, rhetorically asking, “Were they But to come full circle, let’s get back to the fact that one of the things on the Lotus that When I took the drivetrain out of the car nearly six years ago, I was very careful to label every electrical connection with those little tied-string tags. Next, I crawled under the jacked-up car and traced the wire forward.

Sign up for the latest automotive news and videos—in short, everything for people who love carsA few weeks ago, I reached the point in the resurrection of my 40-year-dead Lotus Europa Twin-Cam Special where the drivetrain was finally As anyone who owns a long-dead British car with a Lucas electrical system would, I had some concern that I might “let the smoke out of the wiring harness,” as they say, particularly since there were several unsecured wires dangling ominously from under the dash.

Dino,you forgot about the Lucas 3 position switch! To my surprise, after I cranked the engine for a bit, the tach, along with the other gauges, sprang to life. A Collection of Lucas Jokes * The Lucas motto: "Get home before dark." All of these were labeled, and all were put back exactly where I found them.Of course, when you buy a dead car, particularly one that last ran in 1979, you can get into trouble by assuming that things were wired correctly and working flawlessly before you took them apart. (I’ll get to that.) The other three switch settings—SMOKE, SMOLDER and IGNITE.

Once prominent, it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was formerly a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.In August 1996, Lucas merged with the American Varity Corporation to form LucasVarity plc.. After LucasVarity was sold to TRW the Lucas … There are no British Astronauts, because they saw the spacecraft had Lucas switches, and everyone quit the program. Lucas—inventor of the self-dimming headlamp. The amazing thing was that, when I rotated the key, the wipers began arcing purposefully back and forth across the windshield.

A third offered that many, if not most, of the bad rap of Lucas electricals doesn’t come from the electrical components themselves, but from the ham-fisted attempts at jury-rigging around the problems—for example, wires hastily cut, spliced, twisted together, and wrapped with electrical tape, which is a recipe for poor electrical connections.Although this is initially surprising, if you think about it, it all makes perfect sense and fits flawlessly with the revisionist history of ’60s and ’70s British cars we often read. The fact that the starter didn’t crank was irrelevant. I thought perhaps that the tach had been jury-rigged using the other wire that ran under the seat, but it had 12 volts on it, so that couldn’t be it. This is “Prince of Darkness” Lucas, manufacturer of electrical systems so notorious for problems that there are entire websites devoted to Lucas jokes. The wiring diagram shows the accessories setting as “3,” ignition as “2,” and start as “1,” but those labels don’t exist on the switch itself. I didn’t see any sparks or smoke, so I got into the car, held my breath, and turned the key.Something amazing happened. They were both just lying on the floor under the seat, although both had ring terminals on the ends, indicating that they clearly were once connected to At that point, there was no choice but to examine the starter terminal on the back of the ignition switch and trace the wiring forward from there. "I have had a Lucas pacemaker for years and have never had any trou..." Hagerty.

I verified this by connecting my voltmeter across the battery terminals and finding only battery voltage (12.6V), not charging voltage (closer to 14V). It worked. Like me, he dropped a battery in it and nearly every electrical system simply came up working. the haynes page is great!