R

richb77

New Member
Gents.

I hope i can pick your collective brains as mine is telling me to stick a pair of underpants on my head and a couple of pencils up my nose...

I am in the dying (its taking its time though) throws of finishing of my D90 (Was a TD) 3.9EFi (14CUX hotwire) conversion.

I am having REAL trouble with the electrics.

I took the V8 from a donor RRC which i drove so know it was fine. Everything was stripped carefully before the swap.

But now i have no spark. Nothing at all.

I have (brand new) Lucas dizzy cap, rotor arm, coil, leads, Bosch plugs and 570CCA Bosch battery.

I have even changed the ignition amplifier.

If i remove the king lead from the dizzy and place it almost touching the block, switch on the ignition i hear the fuel pump fire and i get an orange spark (not a good start). Just the one mind. If i then turn it over (i would expect more sparks) i get nothing.

I know the ground to the coil and the positive are both good, I know the parts are good (save the coil which i am still suspicious about but maybe unnecessarily). I am just completely stumped.

Can anyone shed some light on the issue (i know its difficult remotely and will clarify as much as i can).

Cheers in advance guys.
 
Last edited:
+1 on the coil,the fact it's an orange spark doesn't sound good an it should earth a fair way off the err earth plus produce a healthy blue spark so i would say for the cost,change the coil :D
Ohh and check the earth braid/strap from engine to chassis HTH.
 
Its been a while and i now have a bald(er) spot from scratching my head.

Its not the coil sadly as i have had three on it now and all do the same.

I am in the laborious task of checking ALL the earths but so far they are all A OK.

Any other pointers welcomed (as long as they are SFW :) )
 
I'm only guessing here but is the ballast resistor for the coil a separate fitment as it sounds like that could be the problem.
 
I havent tried a ballast. I will fit one tonight and have another go (weather permitting). I am not sure if it had a ballast when i removed it from the Rangie.

Wiring wise i have the white/black from the ECU (running through a resistor) to the coil -ve side.

+ve is to a permanent live. Is that correct? (he says having checked the wiring diagram where +ve goes to nothing)
 
amplifier and have you fitted an earth?cos you shouldnt, coil is 12v ,if you had 9v coil it be brighter spark but coil life short ,ballast would reduce spark on 12v coil
 
Ere James, that little black box on the side of the distributor, ignition module is it?
I had one just suddenly go wrong on a V8 year's ago and the symptoms were very similar to the ones being described here ;)
 
Good, my memory's still ok :eek:
From what I remember the motor wouldn't restart where the ignition module suddenly died, which I later learned is a known fault.
Symptoms much the same, had a spark from king lead but no output from HT leads.
Replaced the module and fired straight up!
 
I'm not going to get much chance to fiddle until the weekend :(

But...I first thought the amplifier (ignition module) from doing a forum search! :)

So i replaced it...and the Dizzy internals...and a second Brand spanker coil.

Cheers for the help guys. I will keep you informed and share the joy WHEN it fires up.
 
If the coil has been wired up to a constant 12v it may well have burnt out from taking on charge all the time but not discharging itself.

If you put the end of a test light onto the neg side of the coil and earth the other end of the test light you should get a pulsing of the test light when the engine is cranked over.
 
Its pretty much sorted now!

A BIG thank you to everyone thats attempted to help me out. Your pointers, questions and general assistance has paid off.

It turns out it was a combination of a couple of things.

Number 1 (the biggy!) was that the professional auto electrician i had help me out in the beginning wired the coil into the ignition wrongly. Every time the key turned to the start position it cut the power to the coil...Hence no spark.

Number 2 is whats stopping it run now. I am 90% sure the dizzy is knackered (down to me messing trying to solve it!) as i get an intermediate spark at #1 but no other plug. No amount of timing adjustment fixed it (about 2 hours attempting) but there is a good feed in from the coil now.

All that aside i am smiling once more and again a big thanks to everyone on here!
 
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