Wont start after rebuild

[Guest]

Doing some thinking. I currently have a flame thrower 1.5 ohm coil installed on the car that came with the car. Since I do not have the resistance wire any more should I have a 3 ohm coil installed. Does it matter?

[simplyconnected]

Dan, Pertronix needs no resistor for the Flame Thrower. Somehow I lost you. What did you get by laying a spark plug on metal while cranking?

John, the 8-amps is mostly due to the Pertronix Flame Thrower coil. It produces a hotter spark than OEM and Pertronix suggests we open the plug gap +.005".

The electronics draw practically nothing. All they do is switch the coil on and off with a 'hall effect transistor'. Hall effect transistors use a magnet in close proximity to gate (fire) the transistor. Like mechanical points, this transistor is pulsing the coil to ground.

Solid state devices need nearly full voltage to work correctly, whereas points don't care at all, and will fire with six volts. This forces us to keep our battery up. Under normal operating conditions, your car is running (and charging) at 14 volts. The battery levels off at 12 when you turn the engine off. So, generator or alternator should make little difference as long as your battery holds a charge at about 12 volts.

I will always advocate for the alternator swap because your generator is only designed to output 360 watts of power when the rpms are high. Modern alternators output over 100amps or 1,200 watts. The real advantage is, alternator output at idle speeds. - Dave

[JohnG]

So let's get down to something basic here: ya gotta take a plug out, hook it to it's wire and lay it on the block or
manifold or something. Rig up a little jumper and crank the engine over and simply look at the quality of spark you see. If you can do it inside a garage with little light, all the better.

The spark should be nice and fat and you might even hear it. This is what you paid money to Pertronix for.

More fundamentally this is what any of us needs to be willing and able to do in the event the ol' car does not run. The car needs 3 things: compression, gas and spark. TBird, Ferrari or lawn mower. Do you have all 3?

John

[simplyconnected]

For car engines I take it a step further by pulling the coil wire and connecting a plug and wire to the coil tower. Like John said, lay your spark plug on the block or intake manifold, crank the engine and you should see (and hear) four distinct zaps per engine revolution. They should be pretty blue, not orange in color.

If you get that, work your way down, testing a plug from the distributor.

If you don't get a spark at all, try grounding your coil body and distributor body.

You said your car ran for seconds. Pour about two ounces of fuel down the carb and see if it runs better and longer. If so, you may have a fuel/air problem.

Check compression and above all, check your oil pressure. - Dave

[Guest]

I am going to do some further trouble shooting tonight. I am thinking I might have the distributor installed at TDC on the compression stroke, but I might have installed the timing chain on TDC on the exhaust stroke. When I installed the timing chain I had the heads off and installed at TDC, not knowing if it was exhaust or compression. anyone think this could be my problem? Before I go ripping apart the front cover again I am going to do my normal testing to make sure I have spark.

[Tbird1044]

Do a quick compression test. If the timing chain is way off the compression should also be low. Much easier than tearing the engine apart to look.
Or you could go a step further and pull the valve cover for #1 cyl. Put the timing mark on TDC. Both valves should be in the closed position and the dist. rotor should be pointing to #1 cylinder.
Nyles

[jopizz]

If you lined up the marks on the timing gears then it's correct. There's no such thing as compression or exhaust stroke on the timing gears.

John

[simplyconnected]

I'm with John. Let's examine this...
Cam & Crank sprockets are 2:1 ratio.
If you matched marks looking at each other (6:00 o'clock on the cam and 12:00 o'clock on the crank) the next crank revolution would put the cam at 12:00 and the crank at 12:00. So, it's the same thing as long as the crank marks are at the top. Here's an OEM setup:

[Guest]

ITS ALIVE! ITS ALIVE! ITS ALLLIIIVVEEEE!

So here is what I found. I pulled spark plug one and tested to ground of car and found a nice spark. Nice enough to shock me since my hand was on the car when I did it. I clamped the vacuum advance and plugged the full manifold vacuum port on the carb. Next, cleaned up the ground and the distributor base where the pertronix mounts. poured some gas in the carb and turned it over.
A few coughs and finally IDLE! Its 15 degrees here in Pennsylvania so for the old betty to sound as good as it did at idle being this cold out was a great sound!

It only idled for 10 seconds since it ran out of gas in the carb.

I still have one problem though which I must work out. The fuel pump does not seem to be pumping gas. Even after the 10 second idle still no has to the fuel filter. I replaced the fuel line from front to rear and have NO gas leaks. I might go pick up another fuel pump at autozone and install and see what happens.

I want to thank everyone who helped me get to this point. (Feel like i am at the academy awards receiving an award) Dave (Simply connected, Jopizz, tbird1044) you guys are what make this forum awesome.

I will update this thread with my findings with the fuel problem. unless you guys have any ideas for me about the fuel problem!

[jopizz]

Dan,

You're welcome. Glad we could help. Before you replace the fuel pump disconnect the hose from the pump that goes to the gas tank and connect a short piece of hose and use a gas can. If it draws gas from the can then it's ok. You may have to pour gas into the line to prime it. If you have a vacuum pump or a siphon tube you can try that to draw gas from the tank to get it started.

John