Started, died, no spark now

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74dusterman

74dusterman

74dusterman
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Minnesota
My wood hauling/ snow plowing truck has a 1965 383 motor with the points ignition. I was driving it today and it was starting and running good until I got home this afternoon. I backed into the wood shed and unloaded it and when I went to start it again it fired up for about 3 seconds and died. Now I have no spark. I pulled the coil wire off the distributor cap and had my wife crank it over and there was no spark there. The points are opening and closing and the contacts are clean. I tried a different ballast resistor and still nothing. I don't know a lot about the points systems. There is a condenser that is wired to one side of the coil, not sure if that is needed. It also has the condenser in the distributor. Would the coil just burn out like that? Any suggestions?
 
The coil is the least likely problem. Check for voltage at the coil (+) to ground first, with test light or voltmeter with key on. If you place test light on coil (-) to ground and crank, the light will blink if points are working.
 
During cranking, the ballast is usually bypassed,and,the points switch the ground side of the coil; so testing the coil and the ballast is as simple as making and breaking the coil ground.
To do this, I jumper a 3 foot wire over to the fender area.Then,with the points open,and the ignition in run, I lightly drag that jumper over a grounded coarse file. A stream of sparks should issue from the nearly grounded hi-tension coilwire. Your file is doing what the points usually do.
If you have the stream, then it's off to the points.
No stream means one of three things.1) no battery voltage coming out the ignition sw, or 2) the voltage is not getting through the ballast, or 3)the coil is bad. So now you have some checking to do;either with a testlight or a voltmeter. No tools? Jumper battery voltage over to the coil+, turn the key off, and retest;stream means coil is good. Move jumper to ballast input and retest, well you get the idea.....
 
Good advice above

1...Use a test lamp or meter and see what you have on the coil+

2...Bump the engine until the points are closed and recheck above. Then check voltage on coil neg. Should be very low. Now you can open the points manually and the voltage should go from very low (points closed) to battery V (points open.)

If that part checks out, it's likely either a bad condenser or bad coil.

You can "jury rig" check the condenser. You don't need the one on coil + it's for radio supression. So remove the one in the distributor (which might be bad) and temporarily hook the one on the coil over to coil NEG instead of coil +

See if you get spark.

Also.........

Check for coil voltage WHILE CRANKING

Check the coil wire itself, they can burn internally.

If all the above seems OK, change the coil
 
Thanks everyone for the help. I will check it out this afternoon. It is outside and the temp is in the single digits so I don't have the most ambition to work on it right now.
 
And then there is always the bulkhead connector.... Could have been that tactical nuke next door... ;) Notice any mushroom clouds?
 
So I have a HEI one wire distributor with the coil pack on top of the cap but I am not 100% sure how to wire it. I know it only needs one wire that is switched 12v but the part that I am confused about is the wiring hooked to the ballast resistor. I have a 2 prong resistor, one wire hooked to one side and 2 wires hooked to the other side. On the side that has 2 wires, one of the wires goes to the coil and the other goes into the bulk head. I believe the single wire goes to the voltage regulator but I am not 100% sure about that. How would I go about wiring the HEI distributor? I am thinking that I would splice the wire from the bulk head to the wire going to the coil and that would be the switched 12v that I could hook to the HEI but what should I do with the other 2 wires? Where do I run the wire from the voltage regulator? Am I on the right track or am I completely confused? With this distributor I should be able to remove the old coil and ballast resistor right?
 
take the two wires on the ballast resistor and connect them together...that will give you the full 12 volts you need for your new hei distributor....

take the positive wire that is on your old coil and splice it to the new hei one wire coil...
 
Put the HEI distributor in last night and the truck fired right up. Thanks for all the help. I didn't realize how easy it was to convert over from points to the HEI setup.
 
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