Ignition help - initial startup not going well

[Bugeye_Al]

A nice weekend in Southwestern Virginia is quickly being over shadowed by my ignorance of my ignition system.

I am not getting spark. I have gone through the ignition trouble shooting section in my Bugeye manual and hit a problem on the CB (+ side for a + ground car - correct?) terminal of the coil. I have power on the switch side, but when I check the distributor side with points open, I have nothing.

The manual suggests a bad coil. OK, I have tried three different coils, same result.

I have also tried different points and different condensors. - No help there.

There are no apparent breaks in the low tension wire inside the distributor and the ground wire on the plate is also intact, although old.

What am I missing besides my sanity?

 

[zimasprite]

Are the fuses ok in the main fuse box? Do you have juice coming OUT of the coil? Is the wire from the coil to the distributor ok? Sure the distributor is working alright? best of luck!!

- Drew

 

[SilentUnicorn]

do those have the non-conductive washers? are they installed correctly?


mark

 

[Bugeye58]

That's the first thing I'd check too, Mark.
Jeff

 

[dklawson]

During Watergate they said follow the money. Here you need to follow the voltage.

As others have said above, if the nylon washers on the points are on in the wrong order, the points appear permanently closed so the low side of the coil will always be at ground potential.

Returning to your original question about the coil.... On a positive ground car, the white wire from the ignition switch should go to the SW terminal of the coil. The CB coil terminal gets the white/black wire that goes to the distributor.

Disconnect the white/black wire and repeat your test. If you get 12V on the CB terminal now, it's a good indication that the problem is with the washers on the points. Likewise, I've seen on at least one occasion where the condenser was installed in a way such that the forked lug on its wire was shorted out to ground by careless installation. This is just like having a permanent kill switch.

Try downloading this and see if it helps your troubleshooting:
https://home.mindspring.com/~purlawson/files/LucasPointsIgnitions.pdf

 

[Bugeye_Al]

Thanks for the responses and the PDF link. In thinking through what I have done today, the nylon washers are probably where I have messed up.

Doug, thanks for the idea on disconnecting the white\black wire. That would eliminate the coil as the "guilty" party.

I'll give everything a look over again tomorrow and hopefully have a running Bugeye.