Love the spring get to drive my car for a week or two before stuff starts going wrong. This year its the fun stuff, electrical.

Having a few problems. First is no spark. Here's what I've done.

Pulled a plug wire checked for spark with a screwdriver resting on top of my intake and tried on the alt. bracket, didn't see spark either way.

Pulled the wire labeled bat. (Red wire, white clip) from the dist. Tested voltage with key at run. Got 11.7 (battery is low from cranking) put a charger on the battery and got 12.4.

Pulled the coil (3 days old) checked the resistances as explained on this site. Got .7 on one test and 7.73 set at 20k on the other. Put the coil back int the cap and retested. Got .7 again, but the other changed to 12.72 thru the spring in the cap.

Icm was tested at autozone 3 days ago and passed.

Tested pickup coil resistance was at 790. Tried testing resistance fron each wire to the base of the dist. but not really sure what infinity would look like on my meter (actron cp7677). It didn't zero out just stayed the same as if not touching anything on every ohm setting.

Checked the resistance on few plug wires 2 were 7-8 one was around 13-14. Would this be enough to cause a no start?

Second problem is a short in my guage wiring which I will worry about when the car is running again.

Not sure if this would be related, but when I tilit the steering wheel all the way up it won't even crank.

Kinda stuck on what else to do/check.

Thanks in advance.

 

First off excellent troubleshooting youve done just what I would have so far. Few things I see. First off you say you have a short in your gauge wiring this may be more important than you might think. Because of how the tach works with the distributor a problem here could kill your spark. So please explain what exactly is the problem with your gauge wiring? Also im a little confused about how you measured the resistance on the coil? Its probably ok as I assume you replaced it recently and it didnt help but I'm still curious.

 

On another forum i visit frequently a person stated the same issues they fixed it by just replacing the whole distributor. http://www.camaros.net/forums/showthread.php?t=143899

 

Ty, id hope my troubleshooting was good found all the info on here . As for your question about the coil, not sure which your asking about.

The in cap coil I tested by checking the resistance between the pos and neg wires ( yellow and red) then tested the resistance between the ground and the metal spot on the bottom center (where the spring makes contact and the black wire). Same as they did on my old one at autozone. Old coil passed one failed the other and was still under warranty so I just got a new one.

The pickup coil I tested the resistance between the two wires on the connector. Then each wire to the base of the dist.

As for the guages. Sometimes my car will pop the 10a fuse that powers the guages themselves, not the lights. Seams to happen when I hit a nice sized bump and once when I had to yank the wheel hard to avoid having a semi parking on top of me when I was slowing to make a turn.

Sometimes I just replace the fuse and all is good other times it will just pop fuse after fuse as soon as turn the key to run without cranking. It will pop a 15a, but so far not a 20a (which I only put in when I want to check my gas guage. Had this problem on and off all last summer and so far this year. The car has started plenty of times with this fuse blown and also won't start now with that fuse being fine.

Yesterday while stuck and aggravated with the no spark, I decided to try and find the short. Tore the whole dash out to the firewall and now I can't get the fuse to blow to hopefully see a spark where its shorting out. Have a 7.5a in now cuz I ran out of 10a's. And still can't get it to short out.

This is the first time I've really started messing with electrical and a multimeter. Not really sure about how to find the short exspecially since its working fine right now. Have had the car for 11 years now and have been happy I haven't had to worry about electrical problems til now. But I also know the longer you go without something happening the more likely it is to happen so any help here would be really appriciated.

Forgot to mention the car died when I was driving it, it wasn't that it just wouldn start. not sure if that helps any.

 

The fact that you mentioned when you tilt the wheel and it won't crank makes me suspect wiring. Pull all the little plastic covers off the steering column and look at the wiring going to your ignition switch. Do a wiggle and pull test on them and see if you lose the ability to crank or your spark kicks in a little bit. You could have a faulty ign. switch. I worked on a Yukon that had an issue like this and it turned out to be ignition switch.

 

I was gonna pull the column apart to check out those wires, but I don't have the tools needed to get the steering wheel off. What I did do was tilt the wheel down turned the key to run and tested each wire for power and then tested them with the wheel up. None of the wires lost any power. I wasn't able to check the wires while trying to crank cuz my dist is still out of the car, weathers been iffy here so I was working inside the car.

Started going through wires looking for noticeable flaws, found one wire that looks like it has a burn mark on it, but don't see any signs of where it could've came from. Started untangling wires as I was going through them and running them neater so I could see what I was doing a lil better.

Found some cut wires from an alarm that was cut out of the car (not by me, a whole different story that I'm not happy about) and decided to clean that up a bit. Unwrapped the whole bundle of wires on the drivers side and found about 9 spots where there's wires crimped and soldered together. Some are ignition wires some are lights some goto the instrument panel. Looks like the hot side of 4 different fuses (1 is the hot for guages) are spliced together.

Found a connector not hooked up followed to the side of the gear selector (thicker purple and yellow wires). No matching loose connector anywhere, assuming some of the spliced bundles have the other side to this in them. Found another connector wrapped in tape and it has a resistor connecting the two sides, no matching connector found, assuming again this was cut off and the wires are somewhere in the splices.

Assuming all the cuts and splices would be from the alarm install??

Since there is no more alarm should I start going through and unsplice this stuff and redo it back to how it should be or am I wrong about this being from an alarm install and it may have been someones "fix" to another problem?

 

The aftermarket alarm wiring would be a great place to start. We had a Blazer that had one installed (by the customer's 'car savvy' cousin) and it wouldn't fire because they muckled it up so bad.

 

I went through all the wiring. The alarm was put in 10 years ago and taken out 4 years ago. I cleaned up the non soldered connections. And still no change. I don't think anything for the alarm would just cause the car to die while being driven.

As for the ignition switch there is definitely a loose wire. If the switch was causing the problem would the car even crank? And would it cause the car to die while being driven?

Gonna go out and start all over on checking everything starting at the plugs and going backwards from there.

 

Oh yeah, I've seen ignition switches do just that. You can crank and crank but no power goes to the coil and in one instance the fuel pump. Make sure all your wiring is intact with an ohm meter. You can visually check wires all you want but all it takes is a pin hole and a little water and you have a wire corroding from the inside that you can't see.
And it is possible that the wire worked itself off while driving.

 

Best I can do to check the ignition switch is test at the first connector under the dash cuz I don't have the tools to get the column apart. Ill check all the wires for power while in run and cranking. Anything else I can do to check it without getting the column apart.

Thanks

 

Best I can do to check the ignition switch is test at the first connector under the dash cuz I don't have the tools to get the column apart. Ill check all the wires for power while in run and cranking. Anything else I can do to check it without getting the column apart.

Thanks

 

Find the wire going from your ignition switch to your coil/distributor pick-up and back probe the connector and see if you got voltage. If you have voltage your issue lays ahead of that connector or in it itself. If you don't suspect the ignition switch.

 

Ok, got spark again. Replaced the ign. Module even tho it tested good a week ago. Now when I tried to start the car a nice puff of smoke came out the intake did I put my distributor in backwards? Car hasn't started yet, and cranks slower than it did before even with a boost. Can't get a timing light til tomorrow but I did try moving the dist. Clockwise and counter clockwise with no change.