deep fried ignition rotor & a leafblower

["Giller,Bruce C." <bgiller@domain.elided>]

	My sad tale begins late Sunday night.  The night before Evil Monday.  

	I should have known better than to work on cars late Sunday night.  But
I own Alfas; what can I say?

	After readjusting the Spica short rod on the GTV to fully close the
intake butterfly valves at idle, the idle speed shot up to around 1200
rpm whereas before it hovered around 750 rpm - longterm, pesky problem
fixed!  I put the idle adjustment O-ring back in and brought the idle
back down to 950 rpm.  Oh, us happy few with sweet running Alfas at
idle!  

	Foolishly in retrospect, I decided to clean the engine as the sun was
setting in the West.  Spritz, spritz went the cleaner bottle on the
dirty, greasy, oily spots.  Then, off to help my wife clear some leaves
off a section of the garden with the leafblower. Huff, puff went the
leafblower herding the leaves to the curb to be picked up later for mulching.

	Back at the car, I hosed down the engine until clean but water was
sitting in the spark plug wells - gotta get a more precise spray nozzle.
 MMMmmmm, how to clean out the water fast???, I mused.  With a
leafblower, of course, I eurekaed.  Huff and puff went the leafblower
and the water jumped out of the spark plug wells and ran all the way
home.  The water couldn't move off the engine fast enough with a 100 mph
wind helping it on it's way.  Now I had a clean, dry engine in no time
at all, so it was time to start the engine to make sure it work.

	Crank, crank, crank, crank went the starter, but eruptth not the
engine.  MMmmm, electrics could be still wet, so some WD40 was liberally
 applied to the wires and cap.  Removed the plugs to see if there were
wet with gas - a bit of gas.  Crank, crank, crank - no starteth.

	MMMmmm, water under the cap, maybe?  Removed the cap and found numerous
beads of water clinging to the underside the cap.  MMMmm, the rotor sure
looks odd in the darkness.  Pulled the rotor off (Bosch unit from RML)
and observed that something was a bit off. 

	The center contact looks good, the contact point on end of the arm
looks good but inbetween it looks like some serious excavation has taken
place with Tom Swift's Atomic Earthblaster!  Lots of the insulation was
missing down to a depth of 1/4".  This exposed a largish cylinder going
beneath the insulation from the center contact out to the arm.  Some of
the plastic arm had even melted.  The DVOM did not register any
electrical connection between the arm and the center.  The strange part
is that the damage looks older than anything that could have happened
that night.  The rotor has been in use for about 3,000 miles this year. 
I've never seen such a thing with the previously owned Bosch-equipped
cars in the past.

	I called RML and Ric and he said that he had never heard of such a
thing happening either (just like my local Alfa mech. sez all the time
when I present him with a problem).  He recommended that I regap the
plugs (NGK) from .035" to .030" and make sure that the timing at idle
was no more than 7 degrees BTDC and total advance was no more than 37
degrees BTDC.  And check out the rotor periodically.  I'll be doing
these things this weekend.

	Has anyone ever experienced a deep fried rotor before?

	Bruce

	'73 GTV - motionless and blocking the running Spider in the driveway.
	'86 Spider
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