"Roger Hayter" wrote in message
...
charles wrote:
to go further, the car electrics rely on a battery - this inherantly a DC
device.

They need not rely on a battery. If, for example, you have a starting
handle and carbide lamps.

On cars that used a magneto and which therefore generated alternating
current at HT voltage, was the phase of the magneto "hard-wired" to that of
the crankshaft (eg by gear/chain/toothed belt drive), so each pulse of the
magneto corresponded to the instant when a spark was required in one of the
cylinders, or was it totally asynchronous, with it being a matter of luck
whether the magneto was outputting maximum voltage at the instant when a
spark was required? Or did they rectify the magneto output and smooth it
slightly with a capacitor to keep the HT at a high voltage irrespective of
the phase of the magneto?