17H 2.5 Petrol Ignition issues

So again im posting in the series section as I feel like its probably the most relevant to this engine...

A bit of back story, a couple of weekends ago I put one of those powerspark ignition kits on it, all was well that weekend... this Saturday just gone comes around, im driving about fine in the afternoon, but in the evening she completely dies at a junction and won't start again, not even trying. I pulled a plug and it seemed like there was no spark. Got recovered home and the 110 dropped off on my neighbours drive as its a bit easier, did some more checks and figured its an ignition issue, the electronic ignition has maybe died. I ordered a new kit and new lucas gold coil to go with (3 ohm non ballast type) and patiently waited until today.

Postman came and I soon set about putting the new coil on to try that... no difference. Ok so new electronic ignition module, I put the new one on, along with a bit of other playing around and she fired up! Rough at first but she was running. Later on I decided to move her back to my drive now she was running again, all was fine until later on when I went to adjust things and check timing. Started ok and was running fine, but suddenly while revving it from the carb it just died, and again wouldn't restart. Just to rule things out I did a compression test and all looks pretty good, every cylinder above 160 psi, so its clearly either fuel or spark. I got my girlfriend out to help crank it over while I did some tests, got the timing light out and tried using that to debug, again it seemed like there was no spark/ignition has died. Then it dawned on me that I'd stupidly parked it in front of my Audi and that was blocked in now

So im not really sure what to check/try now? Possibly earths? I have taken the distributor and coil off to try separately indoors and see what happens, yet to test that with the electronic ignition. Any ideas or thoughts guys?

Have a search, this popped up below on my iPad, but also try the main series section rather than the engine section and you will get better responses, I’m a diesel man

steve2286w said:

Have a search, this popped up below on my iPad, but also try the main series section rather than the engine section and you will get better responses, I’m a diesel man

Electronic ignition problem

Hello everyone I was moving my Landy around in the driveway with difficulty getting it started. After I succeed and wanted to return it, it's refused to start. After checking what I could I did a spark check on the plugs...no spark at all. The tool manufacturer suggested this was an ignition...

www.landyzone.co.uk

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I've got this all sorted out now, not quite my desired out come though... back to points! So I did some more testing and took the whole ignition system out to test on the bench, electronic ignition was not behaving how I expected so I ended up calling Powerspark.

The technical guy there said it sounded like the module I was testing had failed based on its behaviour... that being the second one, so I've had 2 modules fail now. He said potentially there could be some issue like a voltage spike from the alternator killing them. So back to points and she's running ok again now! Still yet to dig into this any deeper but at least its running again

Glad you got it sorted , hard to diagnose a box electronics, where old fashioned set up at least fault finding a bit easier, might be worth putting a post on the series forum asking which spark box people use with recommendations if you want to go that way. You don’t expect faulty units like that but good the company pointed it out

I think I'll just be sticking with points for now and keep a couple of spare bits in case of issues. There are a few other things to try and sort out with the engine, eg figuring out and hopefully sorting various noises etc so that's my next priority.

Although I now know the compression is strong across the board and the oil pressure is good! Both of which give a bit of confidence there's hopefully not anything serious going on.