I have a 1992 firebird with 5.7 tpi and it stalled on me yesterday. I'm not getting a spark at all from my distributor when i try to start it and hold a screwdriver up to it. I've replaced the rotor and cap, the positive battery cable, and the coil with an msd blaster 2 coil and still nothing. It still turns over and the peculiar thing is that after trying to start it, the negative terminal on my battery gets hot. I doubt i've installed the coil wrong, but I'm not sure if I need a ballast resistor for it. Does anybody have any ideas what the problem could be? In the meantime I'm driving my 2.5 liter 1989 cutlass with a blown head gasket, no insurance, and bad brakes so please help!!

 

Okay, I got my ignition control module checked out and it's fine. I even tried replacing my ECM and still no difference. Anybody have any idea?

 

Exactly how are you performing this test?

Do you have 12 volts to the coil? And, no, you don't use a ballast resister for this system.

 

It could be bad reluctor coil in dizzy. Get a DVM measure resistance across the two pin connector inside dizzy (green and white wire). It should read something between 200 to 800 Ohms. Short or open time to replace reluctor coil. To replace this coil requires pulling the dizzy out, punching dowel pin out and removing shaft from dizzy body.

//RF

 

Those were actually going to be the next two things I tested. (I was scouring over my near worthless Haynes manual) I'm going to pick up a volt tester tomorrow to do it- should've gotten one a long time ago.... thanks guys, I'll let you know how it goes.

 

pull off the dist. cap, turn the car over and see if the rotor is turning. If its not then your timing chain is broke.

 

I already tried that and it was fine... but anyway guys I am officially a moron. Here's what happened: when I took the old coil off, I didn't even unplug it- I just clipped the wires. Turns out that in each plug there is a positive and negative set, not both positive and one both negative in the other which revealed itself when i put my volt tester up to the wires and took the plug off to see the big f***ing + on one end. The red wire that the *******s who had the car before used to wire to the tachometer didn't help either because that was negative too. Anyway, long story short, I wired the coil wrong. Oh well, at least its running again. I owe y'all a favor lol.

 

Thanks for closing off the thread - as always previous owners repairs are not like box of chocolates but more like a jar jalapeno peppers - eventually you will get a swift kick in the posterior.

//RF