chrome ignition box: high voltage at the outside?

TrailBeast said

And yet I have not in my entire life had an ignition system fail from letting the spark jump.:D
By luck, or by chance I'll still take it.
I get that you are saying that there is a possibility of partial degredation.
I figure, if the spark will jump a couple of inches without jumping internally it's easily capable of running on an engine.

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I speak from experience, from actual laboratory tests of high voltage equipment, stressed beyond limits, to eventual failure. After failure, components are dissected, and failure modes determined.

While volts per distance vary with air pressure and other environmental factors, a 2" (about 51 mm) gap requires about 150,000 volts to initiate a spark. I will let it go at that.