Well, last night they decided to let me out of my
cage at a normal hour, and so faced with a relatively
free evening, I decided to set right the various
ignition problems generated on the Mexican Adventure.
A little background; on the return trip form San
Felipe the coil cooked, and so to get us back we borrowed
one off a trailered GTV. Then about 20km down the
road the generator drive ventured forth, taking off
the distributor cap, rotor, and cap securing clip. I
managed to get it back together enough to drive it the
rest of the way and onto the trailer, but since
arriving home I haven't touched it.
So, armed with new points, cap, rotor, securing
clip, a box of various coils and a cold Bud Light, I
tore into it last night. Marking the position, I pulled
the distributor completely out to better work on it.
Noticed a bit of wobble in the shaft, but not bad.
Replaced the points & reinstalled the dist. back in
it's original position. Next I fitted the cap, which
is an exercise in ultimate patience, as on an A-series
Spridget it's mostly inaccessible anyway, but on top of
this (literally), I have my oil cooler lines &
thermostat. Nevertheless I was successful, and pulled
the rocker cover to get TDC #1 & the wires in the right
places. (Mental note to replace valve cover gasket
before Palo Alto meet).
This all done I attacked the coil. Now, here in
front of my I have a DVM, a box of seven various coils,
and the sage advice from the .net that there is no way
to determine which ones are good w/o actually putting
it on the car. I also have a collection of brit-car
ignition pointers from Charlie Rockwell that includes
several coil hints. He says that no external resistor
need be installed with Lucas Sport or Bosch Blue coils,
since the internal windings are of fairly high
resistance. So my powers of deduction say to check
resistance, and then install the one that fits the best
with the highest reading. By doing this I choose a
Bosch blue, and hook it up. Crank, crank, crank, nada.
Checking for spark at the points reveals nada also.
Checking incoming voltage shows 12 +, outcoming is
negligible. Then I remember that this was the coil I
cooked in Mexico, and why I didn't toss it then we'll
never know. I tossed it now though.
Next coil up was a large black one that I think
came off the Jeep when I put on the MSD & Nuclear blast
coil to combat perpetual plug fouling. It bolted right
on and Redcar fired right up ! It idled well but
exhibited a slightly different sound when revved, which
I now wonder could be attributed to the lack of
external ballast resistor, as the Jeep does have one on
the firewall. I know this has beaten beaten to death,
but does the Ohm reading across the coil + & -
correlate in any way to the ballast requirement ?
Just happy to have her back-
dstone@sc9.intel.com
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