I'm nearly finished with re-wiring the car and as all good stories go, I didn't take notice of where everything went before taking everything apart. I counted on the instructions to get me through this.

My 67 has what appears to be a 1970 400, so not original.

I need to connect the engine coil. The coil is not by the distributor, I can't find it anywhere. I know what it should look like but it's not visible anyway. I've searched for this thing and best I can tell it's not there.

Is this possible, can you somehow bypass the coil and have the engine start?

Thanks - !

 

No, you need a coil. What kind of a distributor do you have? If your ignition was updated from the original points & condenser to an HEI unit (large cap), then the coil is right on top of the distributor cap, under a cover.

 

Thanks, but I'm still not seeing it, here's a picture of the distributor.

 

Yep, that's an HEI distributor. If you remove the top cover (I can see one of the screws) the coil is under there. It's a smaller square-ish shape, not a big coil like the old cars used to have. One more thing, the original ignition was powered with a resistance wire that fed it about 10 volts. You want to abandon that resistance wire and find/run a new keyed wire because your HEI distributor wants a full 12 volts.

 

Alright then, I'll take it apart and wire accordingly. What freaks me out is that i'm sure I didn't have a wire coming out of the top before, perhaps it was hiding somewhere. I'll jump on that tonight, thanks again.

 

Take it apart...wire coming out the top??? I'm not following, are you looking for a fat coil wire? HEI doesn't have one, it's all self-contained.
Is that picture your distributor? You don't have to take anything apart to wire it up. Those two outer wires on the right are the power supply and tach. The wires closest to the cap is the ignition harness that connects to the module inside the distributor.

 

My bad, I took your comment to mean the coil wire was under there and I needed to get the cap off to connect it to the starter. In the instructions I'm supposed to connect the starter to the coil, I understand now your comments that the coil is built into the distributor, I suppose then I have one question...per your comments, the 12V keyed wire, goes from where to where.

sorry man, I do appreciate your help, I'm being a bit dense at the moment.

 

Ok, that starter wire is another wire you're not going to use. Your car originally had points & condenser ignition, and the coil ran off of 9~10 volts (hooked up to the resistor wire I mentioned earlier). Let's call it 10 volts for the sake of argument. That extra starter wire to the coil gave the coil a full 12 volt shot, only while the starter solenoid was activated (starting the engine). If the coil wasn't getting full voltage, the engine could have a hard start problem because of the heavy current draw from the starter.
Check your current distributor power hookup wire with a meter and see what kind of voltage is going to it. Whoever put that in may have already wired it the correct way to a 12 volt source.

 

I'm pretty sure I've wired it all correctly now, and also dug through my box of old wires and found one that matched up to the type of connector and length that fits your comments.

I tried to turn it over and bubkis, but, I'm thinking there's something some where I've not connected, lights work, accessories work with key turned, just no turn over. I'll dig tomorrow, sure I'll find something. The last thing on my list is gauges, autometer, can't wait.

Thanks again, couldn't have done it without your help.

While I have you, an unrelated related question...Is it possible there are two temperature senders? One on the driver side between the plugs and another on the top next to the oil cap. Reason I ask is that when I ran back the old water temperature wire it went to the one on the top, I replaced the old sender with the new one that came with the gauge, everything fit nicely and is in place, as well a bit of coolant made its way out when i took off the old one, joy. The one that I also think is a water temperature sender on the side looks very similar and the colored wire came off of it from the original wiring. Is it possible to have two?

Thank You