73 240 No spark

[Shawninvancouver]

240dw. Watch this video. It shows power at the resistor but no power to coil +.  Is this the problem?????

[240dkw]

Yes that is a problem, you should have power at the coil wire if you have power on the g/w wire. To see if that is your only problem.

1) Disconnect the coil wire, leave the resistor wires as they are.

2) add a jumper from the g/w terminal to the + coil.

3) make sure the points are open.

you should now have power on the - side of the coil, at the terminal on the dizzy, and on the + side of the points.

If all that checks out Ok and still no spark then you are back to a bad coil or wire. Or possibly a bad capacitor on the dizzy.
 

Edited May 5 by 240dkw

[Shawninvancouver]

Ok that will be next test.  Do you say remove the pos wire on coil?  Leave neg on coil ? Also. Keep in mind one side of the resistor is black white power on run and green white is power on start. So that means the black white runs across the resistor to the green white giving it power when on run.  ???  When we got the car the green white was cut off. Could the car ever start without the green white ? Could it go from the hot black white at resistor to the coil ?? Normally no wires go from resister to coil but when we got the car one wire was going from resister to coil.  

Edited May 5 by Shawninvancouver

[Shawninvancouver]

Ok. So with this way wired what should I get?? It’s a black white to resister then to coil. 
should it be power on start? Power on run? Or no power??

[Zed Head]

On 5/2/2024 at 7:06 PM, Captain Obvious said:

Did you do that hotwire test yet? Once we know the results of the hotwire test and we are confident that everything from the ballast resistor, through the point, to the high tension coil wire is working correctly, we can focus our efforts upstream from there.

Break the problem into small manageable pieces.

CO had a good suggestion here.  

 

Stop messing around with that spaghetti-nest of wires.  Confirm that you will be able to create spark with just the coil and distributor and coil and plug wires that you have.  Disconnect ALL of the harness power wires to the coil.  Let them hang, with the ends protected so that you don't have a short circuit.  Start with a bare coil, no power or ground wires attached.

Run a long wire from the battery positive to the coil positive post.  Connect the wire from the distributor (the points inside the cap) to the coil negative post.  Crank the engine over using the key or using a remote starter.  You'll be doing what old-time car thieves do.

Mess around with this setup until you get spark.  The pictures of those nasty crusty wires and connections aren't helping at all.  Simpify things down to the bare essentials.  If you can't get spark with a single hot wire from the battery you'll never get it from any of those in that pile of wires.

[Shawninvancouver]

Yo zed.  Yes. I did do the hot wire test from battery straight to coil. Nothing happened.  When I did that the coil neg went to dizzy but I did it the way suggested. From pos on battery to resistor.  Other side of resistor to pos coil. Still no spark.  

[Yarb]

Read carefully what @Zed Headjust wrote. The resistor is not involved

[Shawninvancouver]

This was how I was told to jump it.  

[Shawninvancouver]

Also curious why I have 3 distributors that cane with the car. And all of them go in with huge vacuum advance disc up on the top and the mark on the dizzy cap for #1 is in top right when it is actually bottom left. Here is mine with vaccum advance on top and a photo of how most cars are with it in bottom. Any idea why??

[240dkw]

7 hours ago, Shawninvancouver said:

Ok. So with this way wired what should I get?? It’s a black white to resister then to coil. 
should it be power on start? Power on run? Or no power??

If that b/w is the one that you tested and has power than the answer is

Power on run, but no power on start.

[Shawninvancouver]

Ok. Thats what it does.  It’s power on run.  So that being the case. Should this wire set up work ? It has no green white and no second black white used. Was the car wired this way to run and bypassing the tach ??

[240dkw]

I don’t think a car that wired to have no power while trying to start it will ever run. You already said in a previous post that you had power on the green white wire when the key is in the start position. Could you please connect the b/w with “run” power to one side of the resistor and the g/w with the “start” power to the other side of the resistor. Then connect a new wire jumper from the g/w side of the resistor to the positive terminal on the coil. This way you will have power to the coil in both run and start.