View single post by Tom Bradley
 Posted: 03-25-2018 11:40 pm
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Tom Bradley

 

Joined: 07-15-2013
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Hi John,
Sorry about the slow reply. I have been busy with my own projects this weekend a forgot.

The total resistance for coil+ballast sounds about right for both cases. The exact amount is not that critical, the higher the total resistance, the less chance of burning the points, but lower gives better spark. So i think you should be OK using the new coil w/o the ballast. Just do not leave the ignition on without cranking or running for extended periods.

You should be able to check the points and dwell with the engine analyzer without running the engine. Connect power and ground to the analyzer by connecting to the battery, then connect the sense line to the coil connector that goes to the points. With the ignition on, you should read either 12V or 0.2V depending on whether the points are open or closed. You can get the points to open or close by "jogging" the engine a bit by cranking it for a very short time. If the closed voltage is much over 0.2V you either have a bad electrical connection or the points are bad. If you decide the points are bad, then I would go with swapping in a pertronix ignition. It is actually easier than putting in new points and is not that expensive. On the other hand, if the points look OK, getting everything running as is might be quicker. The pertronix can mess up the spidya tachometer operation, so it is better to do one thing at a time. If the points still look good, then switch the analyser to "dwell" and see what the reading is when you crank the engine. It should be about 60 degrees for this engine.

If all this looks good, the next step would be checking the timing. You need to get a timing strobe light, preferably with an inductive pick up. When cranking and the timing light connected to cyl #1, if the timing mark shows up about 5-15 degrees before top dead center (TDC), the engine should at least run. If you have trouble seeing the timing mark, I suggest painting it with a bit of white paint to make it easier to see.

If this all looks good, we can go on from there.

Tom