Did I slip a tooth?

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The MSD is old, it was working before all this.

The old distributer had a bad bushing and was "walking" also I wanted to switch to a mag pick up style from my old points pick up.

Gonna Change out the cap and see if it will fire.
 
Cope said:
Ok pulled the distributor out of the drive gear and spun the rotor by hand. The coil is firing and pick up is working.

That just leaves it to be a bad cap or rotor..

I have a spare cap so I'll try that, if that don't work it MUST be the rotor, right?
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Seemingly so but-----?
 
Changed to a brand new cap and still no spark....

It must be a bad rotor?
 
Here is the cap I just replaced, if you look close you can see discoloration on the terminals so the rotor WAS firing.

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This just leaves plugs and wires....

My volt meter is at work but I'm bringing it home tomorrow and will test the wires.


Plugs are all new but I'll buy some more with a new rotor tomarrow..

I just don't get it. No way ALL the wires and ALL the plugs are bad out of the box....

I should at least get it to pop...

The coil wire has enough sticking out of the boot to engage the terminal as do the plug wires..
 
Cope said:
The MSD is old, it was working before all this.

The old distributer had a bad bushing and was "walking" also I wanted to switch to a mag pick up style from my old points pick up.

Gonna Change out the cap and see if it will fire.
Click to expand...
You should invest in a remote starter switch and spark plug tester to help sort this.

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I have on more than one occasion seen rotors burn through. Right to the distributor shaft. Look into the hole where it snaps on shaft, rusty or a black spot are easy enough to see.
 
The rotor looks good but I'm gonna change it anyway as I'm out of ideas at this point.

The remote starter would be a pain to hook up, I don't use the relay on the inner fender, my starter is wired to a switch panel on the halo bar. Sparkplug tester may be cool tho.
 
I think you are missing something. Hard to "not be there." It was running "how well?" How well did it fire up? A cap and wires does not suddenly all go bad. A coil wire? YES. Because when you "yank" it out of the coil/ cap, you can break the delicate ("damaged") internal resistive material, that was already shaky (example.)

CHECK THE RELUCTOR GAP

Install the distributor. Make / jury rig a SPARK TESTER. This can come in many forms........"suspend" a piece of low voltage wire from the coil up to a plug laying on top of the hood seal area. Weight it down if necessary, to ground on the firewall. Or take a SECOND piece of wire, strip a long end, and wrap around the threads and run that wire to ground. Bend the electrode way way open or break it clear off.
 
The gap is good, I just set it.

I know the coil and coil wire are good because I can get it to arc to the fire wall when I spin the distributor by hand.

The car ran great until it burned 2 wires on the headders. I changed the wires and it still ran crapy. 3 of the new chepo wires were bad out of the box, I got a new set of MSD street fire wires, blaster2 coil, new champion plugs and the car still ran crapy.

Some one here told me to check the shaft in the distributor and it had wobble in it. I got a new, not a reman 76 truck distrubter and changed the wiring to run the mag pick up distrubter and it has not fired after the change.
 
Cope said:
The car ran great until it burned 2 wires on the headders. I changed the wires and it still ran crapy. 3 of the new chepo wires were bad out of the box, I got a new set of MSD street fire wires, blaster2 coil, new champion plugs and the car still ran crapy..
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This is starting to sound like THE PICKUP WIRES FROM THE DISTRIBUTOR need to be reversed. Google "rotor phasing."

Bad wires out of the box..............most of that is LIKELY to be bad crimps at the ends. Stick your meter right in there on the wire conductor and check them, or try re-working the crimps on a couple. Pull them apart, take a small piece of wire such as say, one strand out of no12........bend it into a "U" Stick one end up in the end of the plug wire so the strand is folded back over the wire insulation then crimp the wire end back on
 
I'm not at home now but I think I wired it right. I used the MSD diagram.

Also it will fire the coil when I spin the distributor. Spun by hand or spun by the drive gear it's firing the coil.
 
Cope said:
Also it will fire the coil when I spin the distributor. Spun by hand or spun by the drive gear it's firing the coil.
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By that account it should run but I'm confused on your testing procedure. Toss out a few thoughts. I have had some issues with caps and rotors. I don't mix brands as some rotors are shorter then others. Another thing is the spark has to ground somewhere even while testing. If it doesn't fire at the plug it grounds somewhere even back to the ignition box and can kill it. 2 bad plug wires can do it. It still ran with the old distributor. I'd drop that back in and see it it starts. I'd still rock the engine back and forth to view timing chain slop. 1 tooth it would still run, but not want to take throttle under load, 2 teeth pretty much game over. I have seen them jump at shut down. And I would still pull the plug and verify that you're on the compression stroke with a thumb over the hole and line the balancer to zero. It's easy to get lost by just looking at the valves. Something is getting missed it seems.
 
Cope said:
I'm not at home now but I think I wired it right. I used the MSD diagram.

Also it will fire the coil when I spin the distributor. Spun by hand or spun by the drive gear it's firing the coil.
Click to expand...

RE-read my post above. Is this a different distributor? Try reversing the pickup wires. Google "rotor phasing." You can do this with alligator clips temporarily

CHECK THE RELUCTOR is installed correctly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

These are used in both big block B/RB (ccw) and SB (cw) rotation. You should have the correct rotational arrow next to your retainer pin in the reluctor slot

See the CCW arrow next to the roll pin on the right side of the photo? This is for a B/RB engine, a SB you need the OTHER pin slot

arrow.jpg
 
Cope said:
Switching the wires won't hurt my MSD box?
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Google rotor phasing. This is the third time I told you this. I have no idea if this is the problem, but you said "ran crappy" that kinda sounded like it. What happens is when you switch wires on the pickup the WRONG way, the spark timing MOVES in relation to the ROTOR position. The spark has to jumper further and it can CROSSFIRE to the adjacent cylinders
 
I did look up rotor phasing the first time you brought it up. It's interesting and may be useful later but that's not causing me to have zero spark from all 8 wires.

Just thinking out loud it must be the rotor or a bad ground.
I have spark into the cap, tried 2 new caps and zero spark out.

I got hit hard by the coil wire last night, my girl didn't even want to push the start button after.
:)
 
Yeh. I think rotor was mentioned, too.

LOL

Seems to me it's an electrical/ physical impossibility that you have two bad caps
 
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