I recently purchased a secondhand Briggs ignition coil from a seller on ebay. "Yes" I realized the risks involved and "yes" I am now kicking myself. But I really feel like I should be kicking the seller!
The coil arrived and first thing I noticed was the plug boot was badly perished. It was so brittle and rotten it was falling apart in my fingers. Then I inspected the spark lead and it was so hard it could no longer be bent and it had a huge crack in it. I put it on an engine and got no spark at all. Tried it again a few minutes later and all of a sudden I had spark, but it seemed a bit weak. So I went to the trouble of putting on a new lead and plug boot, as I thought that might be the problem. Put it back on the mounts, reset the air gap and tightened the screws. I had spark, but intermittently. Sometimes the engine would try to start then it would not. I put my spark plug tester on it and there was no spark at all.
I purchased a multimeter that day and waited for it to arrive in the post. It turned up a week later. On testing this coil I found the readings to be very erratic. Sometimes the primary coil would read about 8.6, then it would read 19, then it would read 3.6, then it would read 1 (infinite resistance). The secondary coil was giving a reading at times before flicking abruptly to 1. The readings were all over the place. I cleaned all of the posts and terminals with very fine wet and dry paper to ensure a good connection and tried again. Same result!
I wondered if my multimeter might be faulty so I compared it with some coils that I know are working. They all showed the correct readings and were stable on those readings. So nothing wrong with my multimeter. I tried the coil from ebay again and got the same result as before. Readings were unstable and all over the place and constantly changing. I asked an electrician mate and he tested it with his superior quality multimeter. He got the same results. His advice was that the coil is bad. He said it is "on the way out" and might function correctly at times but then fail. It could not be relied on and will soon fail for good.
So I contacted the seller about it and got this fairly "standard" reply: "All my coils come off running mowers before l sell them so l know they are working. lt might be the magneto on your mower that's faulty. I've been selling mower coils for years and never had any one complain of having a faulty one." Blah, blah, blah!
Of course there was nothing wrong with my magneto. I put a coil on the engine from a working machine and it worked just fine.
My first thought was that if he is so sure of his coils and their quality he should be willing to back them up with some kind of guarantee and a refund if they are D.O.A. ("dead on arrival"). No such guarantee apparently. I got what I paid for and just have to wear the costs. I could go through ebay and request a refund, but my guess is this will just be a waste of time and I can't bear putting up with another seller whining forever about his lost revenue. I guess he can argue that the coil is not technically dead. It is just on the way out and this is consistent with an old secondhand part.
My advice to other online shoppers is to spend a few more dollars and buy a new one! If I was selling stuff on eBay there is no way I would even consider selling a coil as bad as this one to anybody. I would not even sell it to my own worst enemy. The coil had not even been properly cleaned. Covered in dirt and muck that took me almost half an hour to clean off. So I ended up wasting a lot of time and extra expense on what was essentially a dead coil!
What I hate about EcchBay it's their pointless feedback ratings. If one party puts in negative or neutral feedback, the other party can return in kind and spoil your rating. I suspect this guy is a crook who just pulls them off and sells them without checking properly at all before putting it up. A decent seller would offer to send you another or be happy to refund an unhappy customer. And the condition you describe points to an unscrupulous idiot. One way a friend of mine got back at a crook seller was to use sarcasm in the positive feedback. He said something like honest Harry can always be trusted not to sell you a busted mower ignition coil in such obviously appalling condition. Buy with confidence!.
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
Well personally I know not to trust any eBay vendor on any used electrical part. Also avoid those new Chinese clone of OEM ignition coils and carburetors. I know they sell them by the 1000s but not only are they defective most times and they won't replace them; they are killing the local small shops that sell good products and that stand behind their work.
And it is getting worst too as I have ran into few dealers making it onto Amazon selling the same junk. Even some our good distributors are getting con by these manufactures. It one of the reason I am dropping many to the aftermarket parts from my inventory as the replacements for what was once very aftermarket parts are now coming in as junk.
A good example is the v-belts that had been buying for 9 years that I trusted to be right started coming up being the wrong and plus I was having a lot failures. Well back in June I had it as a couple new ones were obviously too short. I final gave in and brought a v-belt measuring tool with the needed extensions. When I measured the belt they were 2" short even they were marked as the size I needed. I called the vendor which at that time informed me that they knew of the problem and gave me credit for the belts. I decided to go thru my stock of belts just how many I had got stuck with in the last year. Well nearly a third of the belt were shorter than spec'd with most of the 1/2" belt being an inch short and most of the 5/8 being between 1 and 2 short. I ended having to write off nearly a 1000 usd worth of belts that are unusable. Since that vendor refuse to correct the problem I ended up changing a vendor that uses US made belt at nearly up to 3x the cost but I don't having the headaches cause by those Made in India belts. I do however measure every incoming belts as I have lost trust that what I order is what I get.
Then there was the case of an Amazon vendor selling supposedly OEM spindles last year that were in fact aftermarket ones and top of that they were defective. So I return the defective spindles and got slapped with a 30% restocking fee so by the time I paid the shipping both ways it ended as an expensive lesson.
I even had a vendor on Tradebit which sells service manuals that refused to take care of problem where they sent me an owners manual calling it a service manual. Since the vendor refused to refund on good terms I email a complaint to Tradebit which gladly refunded my money and retracted the funds from the vendors account.
Just leaves me wondering just many victims out there that we don't hear about.
Thank you Mr tRump for screwing up the US market just for the sake of profits.
Last edited by AVB; 23/08/1809:22 PM. Reason: wording correction
Sellers can not post Negative feedback on a buyer at all, so no need to worry about that issue. In eBay's eyes there are no bad buyers and only bad sellers on the system. The Seller does not have the ability to post anything bad about you and if he does via the positive side then that complies with feedback removal policy by eBay.
Personally I'd do a "Request a Refund" as generally it is granted pretty quickly, especially on low priced items like this. Ebay doesn't like unhappy buyers and they don't give a stuff about sellers either for that matter.
Cheers, BB.
I live a 24 Hour lifestyle, but every now and again I seem to fall asleep, well at least that's what my wife tells me.
Thank you for the comments. I would normally request a refund but this usually means the buyer has to return the item. The postage can end up being more than the item is worth.
Most ebay purchases turn out okay, but every now and then you come across a faulty item or a bad seller.
About 6 months ago I purchased a box of N.O.S. ("new old stock") NGK spark plugs. On opening the box I knew straight away that something was not right. The plugs looked like cheap rip-offs. They had plastic protection sleeves over the threaded part instead of cardboard, which seemed very sus'. I decided to send the whole box to NGK. They told me the bad news a few days later. The plugs were fakes.
The seller must have gone to some lengths to make these look genuine. He had even deliberately aged the box by leaving it in the sun and rain. They were advertised as being around 20 years old, but NGK told me they have never produced plugs like these. They also pointed out problems with the metal which was very poor quality and not joined properly to the ceramic. The threads were really rough. The printing on the stem of the plug was crooked and the metal stamping not correct.
I complained to the seller who repeated the same old line that they all use. He said he had been selling plugs for over 20 years and never received a single complaint before. As far as he was concerned the plugs were vintage NGK plugs that had been sitting in his shed unopened for the past 20 years. He refused to give me a refund.
Not all was lost on this occasion. NGK sent me a brand new box of real plugs. So I messaged the seller to let him know the "good news", that he was off the hook. I told him his plugs were now in the hands of NGK who are finding them very interesting and they may be contacting him shortly. The next day the seller had taken down all of his ads and has not advertised anything since.
Fake NGK plugs have been around for years. Lucky for me I have not been caught too often. I did have one and I won't repeat what I said to him, but he complained to ebay and they told me not to use that sort of language, I replied stating what had gone on and that I still wanted him to die in the way I had described. Ebay replied that they would be watching him in the future for further complaints.
This fake NGK scam seems to be based in the US, as I saw exactly the same boxes of plugs being sold by several ebay sellers over there. I alerted NGK to their presence and noticed the ads disappeared soon after. My guess is there is some kind of crime syndicate, manufacturing them cheaply in China or some former Soviet country, then selling them off a few at a time in different countries online. I am sure a lot end up at flea markets and garage sales too. There are also those who buy them and later realize they have been conned, who then try to re-sell them to other buyers. Then there are those buyers who purchase a box full and sell them off one at a time to make a profit. In this case one victim of the fraud soon turns into many people. Somebody inevitably gets hurt by using these dodgy products in their engines. I recall buying a set of NGK plugs on ebay many years ago and using them in my car. I had only recently had the engine completely overhauled. Before long I had serious engine problems and I recall the mechanic saying he did not like the look of the plugs I had been using. I did not know that there were fake NGK plugs on the market in those days, but am now convinced that fake plugs were the most likely cause.
Perhaps this fake plugs topic deserves a new thread?
I will attach some photos of the fake plugs. It makes me really angry to think that I was going to use these plugs in my recently restored vintage engines and the person who sold them to me could not give a damn. He was only interested in making a fast buck.
I would be suspicious of any NGK that don't plug the plug stock number stamp on the hex. Also you dissect the plug you will also the plug number on the insulator hidden under the metal crimp at the top of the hex. Or at least that is what I found last week while I was investigating CMR6H failures. For some they are shorting out at insulator just before the plug tip. Driving me batty so going try some Bosch plugs as replacements.
They are probably circulating in machines. Good grief. We need to compute a list of tell tale signs of a phoney. It's going to turn people away from NGK branding in the fear of landing these plugs, even if buying brand new is unlikely to get them.
Ahh, if only victa had kept producing the thumblatch catcher series, they would be in better shape today!
I haven't looked it up for years but if you google "fake NGK plugs" there is heaps of info there. Easiest way is to avoid NGK plugs. they used to be the best years ago
I got one fake NGK plug a year ago. Great spark outside the engine, just none when under compression. And through pure bad luck, the Champion plug which I thought was good had a crack right around the base of the ceramic.
Stuffed around with a talon line trimmer for several hours, pulling down the carby multiple times trying to find the issues, swapping coils, then worked out it was the brand new plug. Worked out about the fake ones, identified it as one. I was pretty annoyed at this point, so it got belted to pieces with a couple of bricks and a hammer. The Champion didn't get that though, it had done very good service for several years.
Normally, I use Bosch or Champion, but I do still use NGK occasionally � I am very careful before I buy though. Repco is where I normally get plugs from; just grabbed 2 boxes of Bosch WR8DP on clearance for $20 � $1 each plug. Still plenty in their network apparently.
Watch out for Champion plugs that don�t have removable head tips � from memory these are made in a less favorable country than the USA. Can�t remember which country, and I don�t have one new in box of that type to check.
I purchased some Bosch plugs a while ago that I still wonder about. They are unlike any other Bosch plugs I have seen. I guess I should send some to Bosch and ask them to confirm if they are genuine or not.
On a side note, I have purchased a few cheap, Chinese-made plugs from a local shop, and am so far finding them okay in my Brigg's engines. They are simply labelled "L6" and are said to be an equivalent for the Champion plug that is commonly used in Briggs engines. At least they look exactly the same and have the same dimensions. Some have removable caps, others do not. I have found that the earlier type with removable caps were a lot better quality. I did have one that made the engine a bit fluttery, so I replaced it with another one, and so far all has been good. I actually put a genuine Champion plug in one engine and found it performed worse than the cheap Chinese-made L6 plug. So I put the L6 back in and it has been running much better! Not all of these cheap generic plugs are "bad".
P.S. According to the plug cross referencing website, L6 is the plug type belonging to brand names NHSP and LD.
