Engine turns fairly slowly, fuel in the carb, but can't see spark from the plugs. No kick at all from the engine. Directly off the coil high tension wire we got a barely visible and audible spark.
Primary coil voltage was about 6, dropping down to 5.1 during cranking. This seems low to me, even with the resistance wire (it's all still original points setup).
Harness is all original but I don't want to replace the whole thing just yet.
Not to be a smart ***, but are you sure your battery is charged adequately? You mention that the engine turns slowly. If that is the case, the battery is where I would start, followed by battery cable connections.
Naw - good question. Not only was the battery fully charged but we had another car jumping the battery. That points to wiring connections, I think. I just don't think enough juice is making it to the ignition system.
Hey Joe, If you combine this new problem with the wiff of smoke coming from your starter area(previous posting) I think you have a smoked starter. It could be bad enough to rob all your available volts. And check the wiring near the starter.
I came back in from dropping the starter to find your post. I think you nailed it - the starter has a crispy smell when you get up close. Probably let the magic smoke out yesterday.
I'll test it and the battery at NAPA tomorrow morning and see what gives.
You might want to break loose your engine to firewall and battery to fender grounds as well, clean the terminals, and tighten them back down. A little corrosion goes a long way for reducing available voltage.
Vikki 1969 Goldenrod Yellow / black 400 convertible numbers matching
Just as reference, as Vikki says, a little corrosion can go a long way. You can dump all the hotshots and chargers onto the battery terminals, but if there is reisitance at the terminal-to-battery connections, or chassis ground, it doesn't matter how many amps you throw at it.
Also as reference, a starter is designed to operate for about 2 seconds, and 3 to 5 seconds of operation is pushing it to its limit. Operating it for 7 or more seconds will make toast out of a starter fairly quickly. You might not notice the damage on the short timeline, but such operating conditions is the reason starters crap out in 5 to 10 years. If you operate the starter as it was designed to operate, it will last many decades--my starter has been bakeing by the header for 20 years, many of those years as a daily driver, and it still cranks the same as when it was new.
If the car doesn't fire in 3 to 5 seconds, something is wrong with the car, and grinding on the starter isn't the solution.
To add a little something to the smoking of a starter: A weak or low cranking amp battery will smoke a starter real quick! It doesn't matter if you are jumping it either. Lets say you are only kicking out six volts or you are cleverly trying to use your boat battery.... smoke city!
Ok, new battery, new starter, grounds cleaned. Starter now turns over very quickly.
New points (gapped to 0.019"), cap, rotor, coil, plugs (gapped) and wires. Checked rotor spring contact to center post conductor. Checked good spark at coil high tension lead. Although hard to see in the bright sunlight, I saw sparks at plug end of #1 and #3 cylinders.
Rebuilt carburetor, mixture screws out one turn, idle air screw out 1/2 turn. Good fuel flow from pump when disconnected, accelerator pump jets into carb on throttle pump.
Triple-checked spark plug wire connection order.
Alined timing mark with TDC and verified rotor pointing to #1 post. Loosened distributor and slowly swiveled while cranking.
Compression check on #1 and #3 - 130 PSI on a single stroke. Probably not the full reading, either - it blew past my gauge and startled the crap out of me both times. Decided compression was fine.
I get no sign of life. No sign of any kick whatsoever. I'm extremely frustrated and need to walk away for a day.
Any suggestions, details I might have missed, encouragement? I'm getting frustrated with my lack of progress getting this car back on the road. I've got a long road ahead of me still and I'm considering selling this pile of parts and buying a Cobra kit (surely there wouldn't be ANY problems with that!). If I can get this motor running it should give me enough juice to keep going for a while.
Only thing I can think of is distributor is 180 off. I know you aligned timing mark and have rotor pointing at number one, but is your piston at TDC on compression stroke?. Spark at the plug and fuel in the chamber should make it light (if it's not flooded).
Is this a rebuilt motor? If you have fuel and spark, it is more than likely a timing issue. Dist. could be out 180. If it' s in correctly, it should be atleast trying to catch or backfire through the carb. Did you replace the timing chain, and if so, was it installed correctly. Only other thing I can think of would be an overly tight valve adjustment. And good point by Drew, "counter-clockwise", right.
As Ron points out, no matter how off the distributor is, if you have sufficient fire at the plug, most likely, you'd get something. (If there is gas in the hole, toss a spark on top of it, it's going to make a bang, regardless to the valve positioning. And yes, they will fire @ 180' out--and it will sound just like a shotgun firing.)
My concern is this .019 gap. That doesn't mean j/s as far as proper coil saturation, the requirement for sufficient spark strenght to fire the engine. A classic example of the good ol' .019 point setting happened in Ashtray's garage, and he can verify it! We had it set at .019. Crank-crank-crank, would not fire, not even a hint of a sputter.
I knew better, but we didn't have a dwell meter--because I don't do point distributors--and we had to start with a baseline, which is somewhere around .017 to .019. (In theroy, this gap range will be close enough so that the engine will fire.) We said ukit and ate supper.
The coil must be properly saturated in order to fire the engine, and saturation occurs from dwell time. Dwell time is the amount of time, measured in degrees, that the points stay closed, and dwell cannot be measured with a feeler guage.
After supper, I don't remember whether I turned the point adjustment screw clockwise or counterclockwise as Ash cranked the car. Whichever way I turned it, the points reached a setting where they provided enough coil saturation to fire the engine.
No! I didn't bother to pull the cap and measure the gap because the gap breaks the electrical feild, causes a colapse of electricity in the primary windings, absorbing in the secondary windings. The gap time allows the coil to "dump its load," so its measurement is pretty much meangingless, as long as its break is clean enough to allow the primary windings to unload to the secondary windings.
After it fired, I set the points to shade tree specifications: Turn the point adjusting screw clockwise until the engine misfires; then, turn the adjustment screw counterclockwise 1/2 turn. This the closest adjustment for proper dwell without a meter.
Of course, it could be any of the issues that have been presented, but this is a quiick, easy test you might want to try before barking up other trees.
The engine ran fine until stored in '93. I did have the distributer out to pre-oil a couple of weeks ago, but was very careful to put it back correctly.
Wrong.
Watching the valves and the rotor is hard with just one pair of eyes so I pulled #1 plug. Sure enough, it blew the rag out just shy of 180 degrees away from #1. Removed distributer, re-installed and now it's at least making noises like it wants to start.
It was knocking a bit but the battery ran out of juice before I could get the timing to a reasonable point. I'll charge overnight and try again tomorrow.
Thanks for the help - I don't know that I ever would have found that on my own!
Joe, good to hear your getting that close! And with the help here, your that much closer!
Maybe you'll be driving her by the time Bjorn makes it up this way... might be Agust or later? Maybe you'll have it running in time for the All Pontiac show? (July 30th)
Brett, is there an all Pontiac show in Seattle area July 30??
I'm planning to take the kids down there this summer to some 'musement park and if so I would like to tie it in so your's truly can have some amusement.
smoke city! 
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