• Hi Guest!
    If you appreciate British Car Forum and our 25 years of supporting British car enthusiasts with technical and anicdotal information, collected from our thousands of great members, please support us with a low-cost subscription. You can become a supporting member for less than the dues of most car clubs.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

I think I did a dumb thing

Share this page

T

tdskip

Yoda
Country flag
Offline
So the Bugeye fired right up today when I got out to the hanger, but I just couldn't leave well enough alone. Actually, she was not running right and was "breaking up" at higher RPM. So I went to dynamically time her, she is a 1098 btw, and the timing marks are sketchy at best so I did it by ear and that helped some but she was still breaking up at higher RPM. Given that he has a newly rebuild distributor from Jeff with a positive earth Pertonix I figure the coil might be at fault. She is a positive earth car.

When I went to remove the old no-name coil was pretty hot. It had 12v use with external ballasted resistor stamped on it. I swapped in a new Lucas Sport Coil and she started briefly, ran really smooth and then died. I didn't change any of the wiring during any of this.

<span style="font-weight: bold">My wiring is</span>

Coil + side to ground

Black line to A2 ( I think it is A2, it is hot) screw in at the fuse block. This is supposed to be run to ignition switch but my ignition switch is hosed.

Black and white to - side of the coil

When connect sport coil seemed to run better with less breaking up but quit after a couple seconds

Now I have power/spark on the lead going to distributor, no spark at plugs.

My hunch is that I burned out the Pertronix unit. What do you think?
 
Did you leave the ignition on for a while but not running? That's bad for Pertronix I've read here. I put in a Crane Cams XR700 a few weeks ago and it's working slick....so far.
 
jvandyke said:
Did you leave the ignition on for a while but not running? That's bad for Pertronix I've read here.
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing that out.

I did while testing to see if I had spark at the coil and spark plugs, but not for long. Less than a minute at any one time at the max. Even in that short time period the coil got noticably warm.
 
I did connect it exactly as shown, and had the car running based on the diagram below. The only thing that changes is that is swapped out the coil the car came with for a Lucas Sport Coil, and that is when the spark at the plug wires went away.... Again, it did run for a very brief time period with the Lucas before cutting out.

PerPosGndWiring.jpg
 
Is the Lucas Sport Coil a 3 OHM coil? Both Pertronix and Crane specify one. If not, there's your problem.
 
If it's not a three-ohm coil, and Pertronix specifies one, you can add a ballast resistor to bring it up to the 3-4 ohm range. It's possible that running the Pertronix without enough resistance in front of it could damage it. Only way to tell is to add the resistor, or the right coil, and try again.
 
Sarastro said:
Only way to tell is to add the resistor, or the right coil, and try again.
Click to expand...

If it wasn't, the unit is shot already, but now it would be known what to do to remedy the situation.
 
Thanks guys. Bill - I think you nailed the problem.

The coil I used, once I cleaned all the gunk off it, looks like this.

IMG00471-20090908-16291.jpg


I haven't tested the coil to see if it is a 1.5 or 3 OHM coil, but is clearly says "use with external resistor". So it appears I did correctly connect the unit but that the coil was wrong.

Going forward is a Lucas Sport Coil an OK choice with these units or is there a coil you all recommend?
 
When I installed the Pertronix, I bought a matching Pertronix coil. I've since switched to the Crane 700, but kept the coil.
 
Hey guy, to close this thread out and hopefully pass something along that will help someone else I fixed this today.

I fixed it by - wait for it - following the instructions. I had power going to the - side of the coil from an always on source instead of only having the single white/black wire coming from the power source.

I still manged to nearly destroy the unit, I think as evidenced by the crinkled decal on the unit, but I have good spark at the plugs now.

BugeyeIgnitionTroubleShooting9-13-0.jpg
 
Sad, but happy you found it.
 
When all else fails, then I read the instructions.
 
jlaird said:
Sad, but happy you found it.
Click to expand...

Sad = sad looking ignitor?

or

Sad = as in "Man, is his lack of wiring ability really sad or what"?

LOL at the later Jack, and well deserved.

In my defense, the wiring on this car is really hacked, and that is how it was wired previously, but I still should have caught it.

Bugeyewiring9-13-09.jpg
 
Sad, as in I feel your pain.
 
Back
Top