As you all know I am trying to get my Pinto running for the first time since 2006. Earlier today I was able to get it running but when I tried to time the engine when I shut off the car to reconnect the vacuum advance the car would not restart.
I checked the cam timing & it is dead on. The engine is getting fuel as the plugs were wet with gas. I checked the coil wire & it had about 8k ohms of resistance. The distributor is rotating, had the module tested, and even tried swapping the coil. No dice, the car would not start. I have a spark tester that I plugged in the number one wire & it showed spark only a couple times when my Dad was trying to start the car. I grounded it on the exhaust manifold & checked to make sure it's a good ground. The old coil primary circuit had a resistance of about 1.5 ohms, the new one was even higher. I checked two different coils at the parts store & both had higher primary circuit resistances than the one currently on the car. Also, the distributor I have on the car is one I rebuilt in 2006 and the car ran on it when I last ran the car in 2007.
What else should I check to get spark?
Take off the distributor cap and see if you can rotate the rotor by hand. If you can, the shear pin at the bottom of the distributor is broken. I don't really think that is the problem tho. I think your distributor is bad, assuming it is an electronic ignition model.
I had that happen on my 76, caused me to have to have the car towed in. Removed and replaced the one-day-old distributor and it ran again until I started to take off then it stalled again and wouldn't restart. Got a replacement distributor again and it fixed the problem. I still have a random stalling problem, and when it stalls sometimes it wont restart for a few minutes. However I think that is a bad connection/short in a wire. However with the bad luck i had with the first reman distributor I wouldn't doubt that my stalling problem isn't the distributor too. I would not doubt that it isn't your problem too. I personally plan to switch to a MSD 6a ignition on that and my 74 wagon which has points.
I have two other distributors in my garage so I will go ahead & give one of them a try. Since I have heard the problem with the pin breaking on the distributors that was one of the first things I chekced & it is all good. Hopefully I can get her going with one of the other distributors. I'll post my results tomorrow.
hey R4, Does it have a ballast resistor ? If it does that might be shot. Thats what was wrong with my 78 Ramcharger, when i got it.
Pintos have a resistive wire.
I could be wrong but I think if it has electronic igniton, it wont have a resistor wire. But, i dont know anything about R4's car to know if it has point or not.
Nope, no points. It is Duraspark II. I guess it don't make too much difference since the car now runs.
Pintoguy76, you were right. First thing I did this morning was change the plugs. The ones in the engine were fouled out. Next thing I did was take the spare distributor from my Pinto tool box and put it in the engine. When I did that the car fired right up! I dunno what the deal was but for whatever reason I could not set the timing on the old distributor. For it to even run I had to advance the timing so much, then it wouldn't even run like that!
I still don't know what happened with the rebuilt distributor, nor do I care. I will be getting a new one for the car since the spare is on the car. That would be bad if the car were to break down and it would be the distributor.
I know it's expensive to get new stuff, but rebuilt stuff, in my experience (alternators, carburetors, other stuff...) is never any good. It'll either a) not work at all, and have to be exchanged, or b) work for a little while, and then have to be exchanged. :cheesy_p: >:( :hangover:
Quote from: blupinto on June 28, 2009, 01:53:19 PM
I know it's expensive to get new stuff, but rebuilt stuff, in my experience (alternators, carburetors, other stuff...) is never any good. It'll either a) not work at all, and have to be exchanged, or b) work for a little while, and then have to be exchanged. :cheesy_p: >:( :hangover:
Well, the distributor was actually rebuilt by me back in 2005 when I had my 78 runabout. It was to be the one on an engine I built but when I had the 77 I noticed wiring on the distributor was burned through and the connector was smashed.
Back in 2005 a distributor would have costed me almost $90. It costed me about $20 to rebuild the one I had on the car. Now it's more affordable for me to get a distributor at the parts store ;D
Costed? ??? :lol: ;D
Quote from: blupinto on June 28, 2009, 02:00:43 PM
Costed? ??? :lol: ;D
It's my day off lol. I quit thinking after I got my car driving :lol:
Whew! I 'm glad it's not the edumacation in Ohio! lol. My best friend (a bit ah more mature than us two says redundant things like tuna fish (instead of just tuna, which is a fish. No duh.) and answering phone (instead of answering machine) and other silly stuff. Oh yes, she's from Youngstown Ohio. :lol:
Not unless she went to Groveport-Madison schools lol.
Now to get her to run without misfiring. Gonna get me a set of wires from O'Reilly Auto Parts after the Nascar race today
Quote from: r4pinto on June 28, 2009, 01:44:30 PM
Nope, no points. It is Duraspark II. I guess it don't make too much difference since the car now runs.
Pintoguy76, you were right. First thing I did this morning was change the plugs. The ones in the engine were fouled out. Next thing I did was take the spare distributor from my Pinto tool box and put it in the engine. When I did that the car fired right up! I dunno what the deal was but for whatever reason I could not set the timing on the old distributor. For it to even run I had to advance the timing so much, then it wouldn't even run like that!
I still don't know what happened with the rebuilt distributor, nor do I care. I will be getting a new one for the car since the spare is on the car. That would be bad if the car were to break down and it would be the distributor.
Glad to hear you got it started! Last I knew Pintony had some NEW ford electronic distributors. That was a few years ago tho, you might ask him if he still has any left. He sounded like he had several of them.
Hmmmm.... If the cost with shipping is less than the cost of one at the local parts stores I might have to do that. Then again, the parts stores have them with a lifetime warranty so I will prolly go ahead and get one of them instead. We shall see.
Prolly? AND yall say we talk funny?!
probably, Sheeez!
I don't like typing all that out :lol:
:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
CB its better then what they do in my game lol.. you wanna talk about Abbreviations to everything.. sometimes it takes 10-20 minutes just to decode what they said.