coil fire??

barbee6043 said

i put new points, condensor, rotor, in. i found the old distributor wire was almost just a thread holdin the wire together. put in another dist i had. coil is new. i have spark at both poles at coil, fire at points, they are set, they re movin, i disconnected coil wire from dist, my finger felt NO fire ( i hate shock!). new ballast, ....... this old (65 dart) had been sittin quite a while when i drug it home. i did find the fusible link had burned out, i replaced it, isee no burned wires. the test light at nrg pole of coil shows a constant current when i crank it. so why NO fire?????????? ( many times i wish i was an elecrical engineer, or socket scientist, or at least a decent shade treee mechanic!!!!!!)

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Points are not closing, or distributor is not grounded.

Use a piece of wire and with the ignition on run it from the battery neg , and touch the ground terminal on the coil with the neg coil wire disconnected.
Do you get a spark when you take it off the coil ground terminal?
Should be ONE spark. (This is all the points do) is ground the coil intermittantly.
If not make sure you have at least 8.5 volts to the coil.

If you have power to the coil and intermitantly grounding the neg terminal on the coil does not make a spark, then the coil is bad.

Also make sure there is nothing between the points contacts that might keep them from touching.
Corrosion or any little piece of something can keep them from making contact.

You can also connect a test light to the neg terminal of the coil and just stick the pointed end on the engine while cranking and you should get a light going on and off (even if dim)