Good Morning,
And again, thanks for your each of your thoughts. I've inspected and cleaned up all of my ground strap connections (neg to body and block)...they all looked solid and oxidation free to start with. My resistance from distributor housing to battery negative reads .1 ohms on my most sensitive scale (200K Ohms).
"... .1 ohms on my most sensitive scale (200K Ohms)...."
In this measurement, the most sensitive scale to check a really low resistance would be the R x 1 or R x 10 scale. What do you measure from distributor (-) to battery negative?
I measure .1 ohms when I touch the probes of my ohmmeter together. I get .1 ohms from my distributor to battery neg. 200K is my most sensitive setting. My wife would probably agree....I'm not sensitive enough:-)
I do have the old distributor. I've never had the jeep running with that. I think new points and condenser would be in order. I've never set gap on point. I'll need to research that.
Chris I’m not real sure but you are going to wear yourself completely out on this topic
I’d throw the original distributor in the ole girl and call it good when she fires up and purrs like a kitty cat!!
Last edited by TJones; 05-02-2023 at 10:15 AM.
Points and condensers aren't as evil as some say. They worked for 100 plus years, and are pretty simple. Magnetic pickups and the Wizardry of modern technology can give you grief especially when blended with the old.
A quick and dirty points gap method is to use a match book cover, or .020" on the feeler gage if you want to be precise.
Last edited by gmwillys; 05-03-2023 at 02:27 AM.
Chris there is one thing that I can think of left. Are you checking the voltage at the positive terminal of the coil while the engine is cranking?
Run a wire (very temporarily) from the battery + to the coil +. Turn it over and see if it starts (has spark). If it does not start what is the voltage at the positive terminal of the coil while it is cranking?
Last edited by bmorgil; 05-03-2023 at 09:23 AM.
Thanks You, bmorgil!!Originally Posted by bmorgil
After working on reconditioning my points/condenser distributor this past week in preparation for swapping out the distributor. I tried to start the Jeep one last time with the electronic ignition using your suggestion of running a jumper from positive battery to the positive post on the coil and EUREKA! I started seeing spark right away and before I could turn it off the engine started on three cylinders. After letting it idle for a moment, I turned it off and tried to restart with no luck. However, when I put the jumper on, it fired up again.
Since then, I've removed the jumper and started it several times with no problem. I'm using the same gage of wire on the jumper that I have going to and from the ignition switch.
Can you give me your thoughts on what's happening here?
And again, thank you.
There are a number of possibilities:
A. A miswire. The wire to the + terminal of the coil may not originate where you think it does.
B. An improperly crimped terminal lug. My replacement harness had a lug crimped to the insulation, not to the conductors. It took me several years to find it.
C. An actual broken wire – kinked or crimped and broken.
D. Maybe a defective or miswired ignition switch … and so on;
It kind of degenerates into a bug hunt now. At least you know you have a good distributor.
Go find that bug.
Follow Larry's guidance here. Follow A,B,C,D and let us know. You now need to find the intermittent voltage to the coil. One of the things Larry has pointed out above that you need to know, is your Jeep wired according to the original wiring diagram? Are you using the foot pedal starter or is the stater converted to a solenoid?
Its great that you reconditioned the old one. gm wouldn't be without his points and in the event of an EMP attack, your Jeep will run with that distributor!
A word of caution here, you should not put a solid state electronic device into a circuit with unknown voltage situations. Bad connections can ruin it. Find out why and how to get 12 volts to the coil while it is cranking first. Then hook the distributor back up.
Last edited by bmorgil; 05-08-2023 at 11:12 AM.
Thanks again to all for your assistance. Given that I still have good voltage at the coil + post, is it possible that I'm just not passing enough current to the coil due to a flakey connection? BTW, I'm back to a no spark condition this morning, which is kind of a blessing since I'm looking for a bad connection. Other than visually inspecting every cable terminator in the jeep, is there a more discrete way to narrow the search?
I'd appreciate any thoughts...in the meantime...the bug hunt continues.
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