Still no spark
#13
03-27-2024, 08:18 PM
So after a couple of hours cussing...The Camaro finally turned over....
While the red (pink) wire was 12v when the key was turned, once you tried to crack it dropped to 7v...I peeled back some of the wire and tapped it into a constant 12v and she fired right up. Once the car was running for a second I pulled the wire from the constant 12v and the car still ran perfectly.
I still have some adjusting to do with the timing but its now running.
Thanks for your help, you taught me a great deal about the car.
While the red (pink) wire was 12v when the key was turned, once you tried to crack it dropped to 7v...I peeled back some of the wire and tapped it into a constant 12v and she fired right up. Once the car was running for a second I pulled the wire from the constant 12v and the car still ran perfectly.
I still have some adjusting to do with the timing but its now running.
Thanks for your help, you taught me a great deal about the car.
#14
03-28-2024, 06:22 AM
Glad you got her running.
If putting power to the coil “fix”, it there is still an issue that will return. When you jumped the coil and the car started you caused the voltage to spike. This spike pushed through some dirt or corrosion on out of the way to the coil, most likely on a connector but could even be in the ignition switch. Over time the resistance will build back up and it will not start again. That could be days, weeks or months. Sad part it would be very hard to find the issue now. You will have to wait till it is a problem again. If it was me I would detox any connector I could find wait a week then wire dry spray everywhere.
When dealing with dirty connectors this is gold.
Just to clarify to you or anyone else reading this.
There are two sides of the coil. Positive and ground. Normally there is only one wire feeding the positive side of the coil on an electronic distributor. If you disconnect all the wires only this one wire should have power. When you connect that wire to the coil you will show power on both sides of the coil. It is a coil of wires inside This power will show all the way to the distributor.. There will be some resistance. But without a real ground there is almost no power flowing it is just waiting.
On the ground side of the coil there only needs to have one wire but there may be more. Your tach would hook in there and the computer may be “watching” what is going on from the ground side. The distributer grounds and ungrounds the coil. Think of a light switch on, off, on, off just really fast. We call that a wave form. Every time the ground is turned off the spark fires. Your volt meter does not understand that so when you check the voltage on the ground side it will show an average voltage. 7ish sound right but this will vary with RPM and even volt meter manufactures. It will show on the positive side as slightly less voltage just due to the draw of power. Never run a ground jumper to the coil. You can over heat and damage the coil. You can tap the coil with a jumper to ground to see if the coil will fire. Just do it as fast as you can. At a 1000 RPM the distributor does in 66 time per second.
If putting power to the coil “fix”, it there is still an issue that will return. When you jumped the coil and the car started you caused the voltage to spike. This spike pushed through some dirt or corrosion on out of the way to the coil, most likely on a connector but could even be in the ignition switch. Over time the resistance will build back up and it will not start again. That could be days, weeks or months. Sad part it would be very hard to find the issue now. You will have to wait till it is a problem again. If it was me I would detox any connector I could find wait a week then wire dry spray everywhere.
When dealing with dirty connectors this is gold.
Just to clarify to you or anyone else reading this.
There are two sides of the coil. Positive and ground. Normally there is only one wire feeding the positive side of the coil on an electronic distributor. If you disconnect all the wires only this one wire should have power. When you connect that wire to the coil you will show power on both sides of the coil. It is a coil of wires inside This power will show all the way to the distributor.. There will be some resistance. But without a real ground there is almost no power flowing it is just waiting.
On the ground side of the coil there only needs to have one wire but there may be more. Your tach would hook in there and the computer may be “watching” what is going on from the ground side. The distributer grounds and ungrounds the coil. Think of a light switch on, off, on, off just really fast. We call that a wave form. Every time the ground is turned off the spark fires. Your volt meter does not understand that so when you check the voltage on the ground side it will show an average voltage. 7ish sound right but this will vary with RPM and even volt meter manufactures. It will show on the positive side as slightly less voltage just due to the draw of power. Never run a ground jumper to the coil. You can over heat and damage the coil. You can tap the coil with a jumper to ground to see if the coil will fire. Just do it as fast as you can. At a 1000 RPM the distributor does in 66 time per second.
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