More Electrical Help ...


Wow...thanks...
Ok clip your meter to the coil + and ground, and turn the key to "run." You should see "not much less than say, 6v and not much more than 10 is with the battery pretty much fully charged at 12.6. Since you have points, if it reads full battery voltage, the points are likely open, so "bump" the starter until they are closed.

While you are taking this measurement it would not hurt to "shake" the harness and wiggle around the area of the bulkhead connector, looking at the meter for fluctuation which might indicate a bad connection somewhere.

Move your meter to the ballast the end withOUT the brown. This should be close to "same as battery."

Next, with meter back on coil + crank the engine using the key, and read meter while cranking. Should be "same as battery" when cranking and not below say 10, higher the better.

If this is OK I would check spark Always check a cranking test using the key, and not jumpering the starter relay as using the key gets the ballast bypass circuit into play

"Rig" a test gap right out of the coil, and use a solid core wire, not resistor. If you don't have HV wire, just use any low voltage wire and keep it away from metal. When cranking you should get a nice snappy blue spark at least 3/8" long and typically more like 1/2"

If the spark seems lame or voltage measurements are not reasonable, suspect an ignition component. Coils can go "weak" and still 'sort of run'. Condensers (capacitors) same deal, and modern replacement parts are iffy. Do you have a dwell meter? If so many of them have a points resistance test. Go through that, dwell, points resistance, and then timing last.

If all this is good I'd suspect something else..........

What condition is the engine in, good compression, etc?

How are the plugs / cap / rotor?

And how about fuel/ carburetion. Vapor lock/ fuel boil is a big problem with this damned alcolholized fuel[/QUOTE]

All done...Everything is new and voltages OK... Go it to cough, but not run... Will check compression today, but since it ran OK a month ago, I don't think that is an issue...might be the gas....