No spark- what am I missing?
My book shows 42-47 dwell angle degrees for the six.
Yes, that number is right for the dwell angle. 8-10 degrees dwell is waaaay too low, and it would not let the coil to charge right and the spark would be weak. It MIGHT be OK at idle when hot, but would crap out above idle RPM's or when the engine is cold.
Such a low dwell would indicate the gap is set waaaaay too wide. You need to make sure that the gap is set when the points rubbing block is right at the very highest part of the peak on the points cam. You can't just set the gap with the cam rotated to any position.....Reset your gap more carefully.
Also, measure your ballast resistance cold. A lot of stores will sell you one that that 1.5 to 2ohms cold and that is not right for this ignition. You need to have one that is down close to 0.5 ohms when cold. Try to find a BWD R19; I got one recently from Advance Auto. A high ballast will also starve the coil of the proper amount of charging current.
If you like, you can isolate the distributor very easily:
- Connect a jumper wire to ground and disconnect the distributor wire from coil -.
- Turn the ignition key to RUN.
- Touch the ground jumper to coil - for a moment and then disconnect; DON'T be holding the bare end of the wire when you do this!
- When you touch and disconnect this wire, you should see a spark out of the coil's spark wire every time. You are duplicating what the points do with this jumper.
(And what 'funwithfuel' says in his first post does the same thing....!)
If good spark, then its in the distributor. If no spark, and the coil is good, then the ballast is bad, or the wiring or key switch is bad. But since you have measured 12v at coil + at some point, then these are not likely the issue.
(BTW, I don't use a spark detector; I just put the end of the spark with about 1/4" from engine metal and watch it jump that gap.)
