Help! No fire!

Shawn42850

New Member
Apr 20, 2020
1
0
1
Tennessee
Question for you all. I have a carbed 5.0 swapped 89 lx coupe that was an original 2.3 car. It’s been swapped for over 20 years and recently it has developed an issue with it not wanting to run after sitting for a a day or so. When I first start it, it will run for a minute or two then all of a sudden it just shuts off. It turns over fine but has no spark. I can tack the distributor cap off and clean the terminals off with my pocket knife and it will fire up again and most of the time I won’t have any issues the remainder of the day. Other times I have to do this two or the times before it will finally run right. When I am out driving, I can feel a miss in the motor, but it still runs very strong. I am running an MSD 6AL box, an Accel coil, and the factory distributor. It had the same issue before adding the MSD box I have replaced the rotor button twice and put a new MSD cap on it as well, and still have the same issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
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Id make sure you have the wires on the terminals to the coil correct....Theres a difference between + & - and the way they spark..

What you describe about the cap says its possible the + is on the Negative terminal and Negative on the + terminal...

Take a test light or a multimeter and make sure the powerside of the coil has no power to the + terminal when the key is turned off..........

Sometimes the column switches go bad sitting that long....

Id replace the distributor cap w/ rotor plus replace or install an ignition suppression capacitor and have the coil tested at AutoZone.....

Another thing Id do is make sure your distributor body is grounded good to the engine block..

Everybody thinks those radio interference suppression capacitors are just for the radio noise....If it was just for radio noise it would be attached to the radio or the alternator instead its attached to the coil and FYI capacitors aid in supplying power to a circuit that sees heavy or repetitive loads like an ignition coil..

Interference suppression capacitors, also known as radio interference suppression capacitors, reduce to a permissible level the high-frequency interference signals generated during operation of electrical or electronic devices. They serve as device protection by damping short line-side overvoltages too..

I have an ISC from a commercial diesel truck on my 410w w/MSD plus I have a Mallory 120,000mfd 16vdc w/20v max surge capacitor hooked up to my MSD 6a Box too.........You can really feel the extra voltage on hand it gives to the ignition box when the MSD starts upping its power output after 3000 rpm's...

Good Luck.
 
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