twocyclemania
Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Aug 10, 2010
- Messages
- 505
To break the monotony I strayed away from the OMC outboards and decided to work on a couple of other brands; Scott (55) 5;Scott (57 or 8) 7.5 and an early 50's Elgin 5. I know the ignition systems are old but they looked good and I cleaned them up. With the flywheel sitting on top I spun both motors and was able to to get spark to both cylinders. However, the same phenomenon happened with both. With the Elgin I tightened the flywheel and thought I was good to go but found I had spark to only one cylinder. I replaced the plug wires. Still only spark to one cylinder. I worked on the Scott today. When I checked the motor it had spark to only one cylinder. I cleaned up the ignition and got spark to both. I went to test it one more time before tightening the flywheel and I'm back to one spark. I know everyone is going to say replace the coils and condensers. I'm trying to do this on a budget so I don't go overboard and put more into these than their worth. Anybody have an idea why I get spark sometimes and none at other times? Most likely cuprit between the coil and condenser? I'm not good at checking out electrical parts so I land up swapping in and out but I have a limited number of parts and it does get confusing. Does anyone else ever have the same experience? ps I have done the omc coil transplant to the Wico 5/8 field and it does work. If it's coils I can do that but the 5/8 field is a bit hard to find when you have the 7/8. I just like to get these little beasts to run but you can't beat the 50's and 60's OMC's for ease of repair, parts availability and reliability.