Electronic Ignition Conversion HELP
Common on man, you have to pull the wires off to check for power. The side of the ballast that has the coil wire, must have power on start up. No power it will not start. The power supply that goes threw the ballast is from the ignition side.
COME ON MAN Use your head
!!!!YOU CAN NOT CHECK FOR OPERATING VOLTAGE WITH WIRING DISCONNECTED!!!
"Why is this, you ask?"
It is because when you disconnect a wire, YOU REMOVE THE LOAD. You can have some pretty darn crappy connections in the path to the ignition switch, AND STILL SHOW 12V just fine with the wire disconnected.
TO get a true picture, you MUST check this under load, hooked up, so that you can see what's is happening.
Let's simplify this down to a "points" system, and let's "say" that you have the ever --popular bad connection in the bulkhead.
Here's the circuit---from the starter relay stud, ---through the fuse link--through the bulkhead--through the ammeter circuit--through the igntion switch connector--through the switch--back out the switch connector--back out the bulkhead--to the ballast--out the ballast to coil + --through the coil--to the points --WHICH ARE OPEN
This means that you have NO LOAD on this circuit. If you turn on the key, you WILL measure "battery" anywhere in that circuit--clear down to the open points!!!!!
Now we CLOSE the points, which puts the circuit under load IF the points are not corroded.
NOW we measure the drop everywhere-----(let's say) the .1-.2V into the bulkhead, the .2V through the ignition switch, and the .4V coming back out the bulkhead, so NOW instead of "battery" at the key side of the ballast, we measure "battery" (12.6) - bulkhead drop (.2) - switch drop (.2), -bulkhead drop (.4) and so now we have a grand total AT the resistor of 12.6-.8 = 11.8
What does all the above mean? You have found some significant bad connections from the battery through the harness and back to the ign system!!
To take this a step further, you cannot get a feel for what is "getting to" the coil without the coil drawing current. If the system is setting in a "run" condition/ engine off, the coil drawing current, you can measure EACH SIDE of the resistor and see what's going on.
Same thing is true of the brown bypass circuit. If one simple thing--like the bulkhead connector is corroded, you can NOT measure the "brown" circuit disconnected, because this will NOT show up the bad connection through the bulkhead.
