I bought an HEI dist. off ebay and installed it in my 87. 2.8->5.7 swap.

Got er installed and there is 12v to the coil, and 12v on the yellow and red wire going into the cap. There is a black wire going to the cap that is unconnected in the coil just a spade type connector.

While there is power going to the coil, no spark will jump to the plug terminals. Does anyone have any ideas? Im about ready to pick 2 or 3 up from the junkyard just to see if they work.

 

Black wire is a ground. It's usually bolted to one of the coil mount bolts.

Is there a rotor under the cap? Is the rotor spinning around when the engine cranks over? Is the module plug from the distributor plugged into the cap? Is there a module inside the distributor?

Reading material
https://www.thirdgen.org/hei
http://forums.superchevy.com/70/6261...tup/index.html

 

Ill try grounding it somewhere Thanks. I did see some sparks jump to the termials at one point but could never replicate it.

The roter spins and everythings plugged in.

 

Well I pulled a dist from the jy, ill put it in and report back.

 

It could be a bad coil or module

 

Possibly. JY dist sparked fine. Getting the engine to run, thats another problem

 

Large cap HEI with the coil on top??

If so, there are 3 wires going between the coil and the 3-wire harness that feeds down into the distributor to the module....

The + side that is on the same double-pronged spade connector in the cap as the 12V+ power feed to the coil from the vehicle's wiring harness.

The - side that is on the same double-pronged spade connector in the cap as the TACH wire to the vehicle's wiring harness (if your car does not have a tach there will be no wire from the vehicle's wiring harness connecting to the TACH terminal on the distributor, although there will still be a wire leading down to the module inside the distributor).

Last is the ground wire or ground strap which connects between the coil's metal "square" amature to a single-pronged spade connector in the cap. Again, there is a wire from that spade connector down into the distributor's module, but there is no connection from this to the vehicle's wiring harness.

 

i am converting a tpi to carb and i have a new hei large top distributor// which old tpi wire goes to the tach terminal on the new distributor? what color, where is it? thanks