Slant six starting woes...

[bill dedman]

Originally Posted by Dragsinger

do you have any ignition "box?" I assume you have some style of box because you removed a magnetic pickup distributor and installed a point type distributor.

A point style system DOES NOT use any control box, thus making it the most simple system. A point type system has battery power on coil positive and the distributor single wire point lead connected to the coil (-) terminal. No other wires are required to make a spark.

With battery power to the coil positive you can manually open the points and the coil will spark.

So, make sure the points are clean and opening about .015" when on the distributor cam lobe. Make sure you have a new condenser in the distributor. As mentioned in an above suggestion, you can remove the distributor and turn it by hand and the coil will fire each time the points open. [you need a ground wire from distributor to the engine when testing the distributor out of the engine. No ground required when it is mounted in the engine]

Use a spark plug wire in the coil secondary tower and plug in a test spark plug gapped at .040" Ground the test plug to the engine.

Please post your results.

We disabled (wired around) the orange box when we installed the old, points-ty[e distributor and ran a wire ddirectly from the + post on the battery to the + side of the brand-new coil; no detours along the way... the coil plus side is getting 1.4 volts.

The wore coming out of the distributor is wired directly to the minus side of the coil; what could possible go wrong???? LOL!!

A lot, apparently.

The points are clean and gapped at .015".

The distributor came out of an engine that was running well, when it was removed.

Next step is to install a new capacitor (er, condenser.)

Thanks much for your advice!!!!

I'll get back to you, but probably not today... It's 96 degrees outr there, and the car is outside.... and I am 72 years old, and my partner is 73... too old for this XXXX..... LOL!