Hei conversion Intermittent start?

1. i unplugged the dist. plug and connected two prongs to the plug that goes to the distributor, set the meter to 200mv as shown in your picture(luckily, we have the same cheap meter) and turned over the engine. It didnt go over 0.xx(less than .2-3ish). Sorry no pics of it, working alone with some dead time before my first call.

2. With the ignition in the run position put a prong on the "B" blade(red power wire going to my relay) and the other prong on the C blade(black wire goes to neg. on coil). Set to DCV-20. It gave me 0.34v. However, putting one prong to a ground and measuring the C & B blades individually i got readings that were within .1 of the battery measurement.

3. A little hard due to #2 and a low battery(i guess i'll be seeing the parts store for charge number 5. In run battery shows 9.12v, cranking it dips to 8.9 or so. Individual blade measurement(like described in #2) shows 8.7x at each blade when cranking.

Everything connected in the tests minus the dist. plug for #1


PS: i have that plastic shielding, I bought 7ft of it to get rid of the annoying harness tape. I just havent put it on the firewall until i get the ignition finished.(which should hopefully explain why my firewall looks like a mess of wires)


After all of my careful writing, I still wrote it wrong. Meant to say measure voltage on HEI Positive and the ground.

Sound like your voltage is low. I am also concerned about the signal from your distributor. I would hope you would be getting at least a signal above the 20.0 or so. Are you sure the gap is ok on the reluctor to magnetic pickup? It is supposed to be 0.008". Be sure to check it woth a brass feeler gage!