This is a good thread and I can relate to many of the things that has been said here, I never tried to stop an engine though, but I could hold a plug wire with the engine running when I was younger, on the old points and coil ignitions. and pulling the wires one at a time was the thing to do to find the dead cylinder wasnt it ? *LOL*
I will never forget the look on my cousins face as he wet on he Dads electic fence almost made me feel sorry for the mean little chit *L*

Ok, we figured out as kids we could squeeze 4 kids on a Rutmann Toad mini bike with a 2hp briggs. Ok, so I'm the kid driving and also sitting ON the spark plug!!! Ok, thats enough of that! and it takes about 200 feet just to get that little bugger rolling.

Back in the 50's I spent my military service as a radioman on an old diesel electric submarine. The radio shack is always off limits to the crew but there were always the sports nuts that knew when we copied the fleet broadcast and had the latest ball scores and they would come in the radio shack uninvited to check the scores. I hit upon an excellent deterrent by lifting my feet off the deck while sitting in my rubber bottom chair (insulating myself from ground), and grabbing the hot side of the 70 volt dc code key. All I had to do was turn around and touch the interloper and he would get the full shock because he would be the one grounded. That worked fine for the non-electronic trained guys but the crew members that were electronic trained quickly caught on and made sure not to touch anything that would ground them while in the radio shack. They in turn would carefully reach out into the passageway and touch someone else. If they were in turn touched ground then they would get the shock. I can remember once we had three guys lined up holding hands all the way out in the control room and everybody else avoiding them like the plague because if they touched them they would get shocked.

Those were the good old days. I'll bet if anyone tried something like that in today's Navy they would probably get put on report.

Speaking of Model T coils... My dad said when they were young they used to rig one up to a nail in a park bench. You can guess the rest...

AV8TOR

my Granddad said when they were young they connected up a Ford smodel T spark vibrator coil to a screen wrapped around a wood telephone polle that the town drunk would pee on every Saturday night. When the pee hit the screen it completed the loop to ground and ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZap.

A guy in high school had a nice car that people were always leaning on and smudging the paint. he rigged a Model T coil to a chain that he dropped when someone was touching his car. the toucher closed the high voltage loop and ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZap.

Another guy rigged a Model T coil to spark plgs in each of two exhaust pipes that came straight up just after the cab on his pickup. When he lit off the coil flames came out the pipe!!!!!!!!!

The Model t coil vibrated and put out a contiinuous high voltage to a spark distributer for the four plugs. The high voltage was always hot and was routed to each plug by a rotating high voltage distributer.

Wish I had one of those coils to play with now.

We used to have fun charging a (very) large capacitor with a high voltage Megger tester. It never killed a guy.
Serious now, I am poking fun at statistics. Never killed any healthy guy would be better phrased, because we all were checked up at regularly .
So.... good by to "never had a problem". It's a non-defendable statement 
Still; I have heard of no one that got killed by gasoline engine ignitions. Anyone opposing to this one? Did a person ever get killed by ignition pulses? If so, under what conditions?

Not the coil, but the vibrator that caused the continuous sparks. The engine was like glow plug ignition. When conditions were right, the spark plug would ignite the mixture. Needless to say that plug life was a problem in those days. Hm... Not only plug life.

It was my understanding that there was actually a rotor on top of the engine that the high voltage spark energy was distributed to each cylinder in turn, not unlike the "modern" system that distributes the low voltage to the coil and then the high voltage to each plug through the distributer. I guess now most engines have a coil associated with each cylinder and the distribution and timing is done electronically????

There are a couple of CD ignitions that may have the ability to impart a lethal jolt but they are not common to the general public.

The Model T had 4 buzzer coils in a box on the firewall...
There was a roller inside a small can on the end of the camshaft..The can was connected to the spark lever on the steering column so it could be advanced and retarded....As the roller turned inside the can it connected each coil in turn to fire the spark plug...The coils were not activated until the roller contacted the metal piece on the inside surface of the can...
Last Model T truck I bought in 1951 cost me $2.50....Sold it for $5, a 100 % profit...
The coil box was wood and after 50 years or so there were spark tracks all over the inside of the box, looked like termites were in there...
Sometimes you could turn the key on when one of the coils was activated, and the engine would start all by itself....

Yeah, a lot of the new engines have a separate coil, etc. for each cylinder as you mentioned.

Speaking of Model "T" coils, I was surfing the web, kind of bored the other day, and was looking at some pulse jet sites. I was a bit surprised to see that some of those guys use Model "T" coils to start their pulse jets, and they are still available to buy!

Uh oh.... now I've "done it".

AV8TOR

Would that happen to be the Baya?

If you really want to feel the effects of voltage do what I did when I was about 11. I had an electric race car set as most kids did at that time. My car wouldn't work one day and I didn't know where my dad's meter was to test the power supply. So I did what you do to test a 9v battery....I put my tongue on the track and pulled the trigger. Holy #$#&^ @#$& !!!!!!! I seen the Sun and the Moon, not just stars. The worse part was it crippled my muscles and I am not sure how long it took for me to drop the gun. Last time I ever did that......but I did find out it was the car that was toast not the power supply. [:@]

Speaking of Model T coils a favorite trick in the 30's and 40's was using a separate non grounded battery and electrifying the outside of the car body and the door handle. Simply shocking.

My uncle told me when he was in High School if the ground was wet you could throw a chain out with the negative ground and attach the Model T coil the the frame of your car. Then the idea was to slowly creep up on the unsuspecting and touch bumpers before they got out of the car.

When I was about six my older country cousins said lets see who can pee on that fence wire. It made a lasting impression as I was knocked to the ground and peed on myself. Boy they thought it was funny as heck, till we got to the house and my Mom asked why I peed my pants. Their Dad whaled the tar out of them. Too bad now days he would be arrested for child abuse.

John

My own story of shocks is when I was playing with the capacitor on a disposable camera... in the rain... at night... Sure the flashes whee amazing but as soon as my fat little thumb crossed the gap between the capacitor and the switch... ZAPPP!! I got the living heck jolted outa me and got some of the skin on my thumb burned off. Later I gave the camera to my buddy and cut the switch out and moved the capacitor and wires to where it used to be. When he depressed the trigger to snap a pic of the girls at camp over the windowsill, he got the shock of his life and flew over the side of the window... all I can say is that I woke up on a raft in the nearby lake the next day... [X(]

-Chris