ignition points/coil

[ronnny]

Looking at buying a 68 truck with a 350. They say been setting a year or so. a year ago would start it up. It looks good. Pull off the dist. cap and it looks good points and all look on the new side. getting fuel. will not start. weak to no spark. The question is if you read the voltage on the terminals I only read 6 volts with the switch on. Is there a resister to bring down the voltage or is this my problem? If it is supose to read 6 volts then what should you read for the wire going to the dist. cap? The gap for the points look good. I though about getting a coil i have here and making a couple wires with gator clips and see if it would start if i ran it straight off the battery. The plug wires look good but the plugs are a little dirty. It seems to spin pretty free.

If you have any thoughts that might help me start it to make sure it runs before i buy it it would be great. thanks.

 

[tRustyK5]

The old points iggy had a resistor to drop input voltage to the coil to ~9 VDC.

Try swapping the condensor, a bad one will give a weak/no spark situation.

Rene

 

[diesel4me]

Yes,older truck that had points had a resistance wire made into the wiring harness ,some used a porcelain block style resistor instead though..GM used a bypass wire that went to the starter solenoid "R" terminal and it went from there to the coil positive,to give the coil a full 12V during the cranking period..

I bet its just the contacts are corroded or the condensor is bad,sometimes the go bad just sitting..try polishing up the contacts with a peice of 400 wet/dry sandpaper and spray them with contact cleaner or carb cleaner and let it evaporate and try again..see if it has spark at the coil wire,as the cap or rotor might be faulty and preventing it from reaching the plug wires..