Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

[NHGuy]

Re: Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

No need to fiddle with the interrupt at this point. Just do as Jason said and you will find which problem is the gray wire issue. That's what's next.

"Disconnect the gray wire at the back of the tach next, and hook it up at the coil. If you loose spark the gray wire has a short in the harness, cut it out and run a new wire. If it's fine, the tach is bad and shorted internally"

 

[viper1216]

Re: Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

Thanks Nhguy....I was just trying to look ahead if the tach and grey wire ended up not being the issue. I always like to have a plan B to go to next if that turns out to be ok. I will give those a shot tomorrow and see what I can come up with.

 

[NHGuy]

Re: Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

If it runs your interrupt isn't tripped. The interrupt grounds the white/green wire to the ignition sensor under the ignition rotor , thereby stopping your spark.

 

[viper1216]

Re: Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

Ah, I gotcha. I got messed up on that because I was reading a thread and it said something about a grey wire with interrupter, might be a newer one or something. I looked up the wiring diagram and see what you mean now about the wht/green. Now that I have the schematic, I'm going to go through it tomorrow and make sure everything is as it should be.

 

[MikDee]

Re: Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

It wasn't the wires Mikdee, those were correct. It was the timing on the distributor. It was advanced way to much.

Well, You put the wires on the cap, without checking anything inside the distributor, before, or after. That's part of the job!
You could have just moved each wires location, one, or two, plug wire sockets forward (clockwise), or backward (anti-clockwise), to match the rotors position.

 

[viper1216]

Re: Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

Well, You put the wires on the cap, without checking anything inside the distributor, before, or after. That's part of the job!
You could have just moved each wires location, one, or two, plug wire sockets forward (clockwise), or backward (anti-clockwise), to match the rotors position.

Actually I did look at the position of the rotor and it's position at top dead center with the cap off. It was pointing at the number one cylinder, like it's supposed to. I also tried rotating the wires around the cap, just in case I was off on the order, and no spark all the way around no matter where the wires were. The problem was that the rotor was pointing at number one, but it was off by about an inch. So it was firing when it was past the point for the wire. I found it by actually marking on the distributor where the center of the number one wire was, and then putting it at TDC again and looking at mark vs rotor position. That's when I noticed it was off a little. I didn't think to really check it that close as I didn't move the distributor at all....so I wasn't expecting it to be that far off. It was running one day, and then not running the next. Lesson learned....

 

[MikDee]

Re: Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

Is your centrifugal advance working? The weights, & springs under the breaker points plate? Ignition off - If you grab the rotor & shaft, with your hand, it should turn some in one direction, & spring back by itself freely. Once you check this, you really need to put a timing light on it now, and set the timing to specs.

By the way, where are you located? in Warwick N.Y.?

 

[viper1216]

Re: Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

Thanks! I checked the advance system when I put the new ignition on. Everything was working good and moving freely. Yup, timing light is the next thing today. I was just glad that it fired up last night. Now that I have it actually running, I can move on to getting it running well. Also need to adjust the carb as well. Rebuilt it end of the season last year as well as a a new head gasket. West Warwick is in Rhode Island.

 

[viper1216]

Re: Brand new electronic ignition conversion kit - Still no spark

Yup, bad Tach. There was no grey wire on the back of the tach...I had Purple on the Sender post, Brown on the ground and a cream color on the Ign. I just pulled them all off and then touched the grey to the coil. Engine kept running. Reattached the wires and touched the grey to coil and engine started to die. So a new Tach is in my future. Didn't get a chance to throw the timing light on it today. Engine is still skipping on me. I'm hoping it's just the timing being off. Also leaning towards bad fuel. It's from last year. I had stabilizer in it, but who knows. I might grab a fuel jug and try to run it off fresh gas and see if that makes any difference.