Condenser failure

[cgsheen1]

16 hours ago, bluez said:

Thanks for the pic, much cleaner than the one I’ve been referring to.
I get initial spark out of coil wire then nothing, same as before, so my thought is a short. Still have good spark to points.  
The tach and ignition switch are the 2 things I haven’t checked yet. 

IF you powered the coil direct from the battery THEN you literally removed both the ignition switch and the tachometer from the circuit (thus from the equation). (to be clear: removed the B/W wire from the "+" side of the coil, replaced that with a wire direct to battery positive for a short period WHILE TESTING only)

The problem is then isolated between the "+" pole of the coil -> to the distributor (and it's connection to the block which is where it gets it's ground connection). 

[Yarb]

I still think there possibly is a dirty ground problem 

[Zed Head]

The single spark indicates that the coil has power and ground.  The fact that there are not more sparks indicates that the points are not opening and closing.  Breaking and making the circuit through the coil.  Could be that the cam on the distributor is worn out or the points are not set correctly (held open or held closed) or the distributor shaft is not turning.

With the key on and the distributor cap off it should be possible to open and close the points by hand and get a spark each time from the center wire of the coil.

The rubbing block of the points needs to be on the cam point when setting the points gap.

From about 1:00

https://youtu.be/BC3nmuXdEuI?feature=shared

[bluez]

Finally some good news.. She’s running after much quality time. 

Thanks to all for the tips. It’s been a few decades since I’ve had to work on electrical issues.. Pretty sure I over complicated this.

-The distributor shaft/rotor turns fine, no issues there.

-Yes, hot wiring the coil does bypass, everything else, (should have figured that out earlier). Still getting good spark at points, but only intermittent spark to plug.

- Ground/short, unknown.

Started from scratch this morning, rechecked everything. Found the following: after swapping out the 2nd coil, I had reversed the coil wires (blk +, blk/wh -)🤬. This caused a couple of hrs of wasted time.

Remote starting still seemed to get good spark at points, still got Intermittent spark at plug.

Swapped out main coil/dist lead, and replaced points, car fired and started.

Put everything back together, turned key car started right up.

So it appears the replacement coil was bad, and possibly bad points or dist lead. The removed points look fine..  

Will test coil and dist lead. Still a bit puzzled what the cause was.

 

[Zpenman]

Glad you got her going, electrical issues can often be quite mysterious.