no spark at the points

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moggiethouable
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no spark at the points

Post by moggiethouable »

part number DST 107
A little devil of a wire fitted to the distributor.
Intermittent breaking detectable with a multi meter.
Where angels fear to tread
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geoberni
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Re: no spark at the points

Post by geoberni »

I spent an hour at the side of the A1 this afternoon after Basil suddenly died; I was only going 1 junction, about 2 miles!!
RAC Chap towed me home (only about 6 miles) as all indications were that the Electronic Ignition Unit (Accuspark) had failed.
Couldn't do anything as although the box of travelling spares I'd got with the car had some Points, it didn't have a Condenser. :roll:
Once I'd got him in the garage, tried him again and started right away. :evil: Didn't sound as though running smoothly though.
I've ordered a replacement unit so we'll see how we get on.
Scheduled to attend the Nuffield Place Rally next Sunday!

Hope I haven't got a doggy connection somewhere. RAC Chaps reasoning was that there was no spark, but also his multimeter showed no switching of the 12 volt at the Coil, i.e the 'points' function wasn't operating.
Basil the 1955 series II

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myoldjalopy
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Re: no spark at the points

Post by myoldjalopy »

Although some people swear by electronic ignition, there seem to have been a number of people here reporting problems with them........at least the old sysyem can be fixed at the roadside - if you carry the necessary spare parts. I'm gonna stick with my Distributor Doctor points and condensor.
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geoberni
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Re: no spark at the points

Post by geoberni »

Well after my latest exploits...
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=69069#p629851
I've now confirmed that my woes were an intermittent Coil winding, since I now had a definite open circuit Coil, which had always checked out OK with the previous investigations I'd done.
I think the RAC guy last week was wrong; he was using a digital multimeter to try and see the switching of the 'points' and a digital meter often does not have a fast enough response rate to see fast switching. Compared to an old analogue meter where you would see the needle swing every time, a Digital will usually just settle at a lower average reading if it's fast switching, like with a set of points. So 12-13v fast switched on/off easily just becomes a steady reading of 10-11v
Basil the 1955 series II

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