Hey there
Swapped in a new to me 2.8 engine that had been rebuilt many moons ago.
Engine was complete with everything incl coil and dizzy.

Anyway, I tried to start it but there appears to be no spark.
I temporarily hooked up my old coil but still no spark.
Changed in my old dizzy but still no spark.

I'm wondering if an earth problem cos of all the painted parts. Took off all the straps and cleaned them up but still no difference.

Thought I would stumble on the issue by changing in old known working parts.

Need help in diagnosing what's up. I don't have a volt meter, only a test light.
So far I checked the power going in to the coil, with the key in run position without cranking - pink wire has power. White wire did not.
The two small black wires between the coil and dizzy had power on them.

What next. How do I tell if coil is any good?

 

If you want the easy way to check that along with the ICM just take it to auto zone and have them test it. Its free and easy IMO

 

There is no autozone in Canada

 

Just go out and get a replacement ignition module. They go bad if you look at them cross-eyed. I'd say that probably at least 8 out of 10 times a no spark is the module, if everything is hooked up and has power.

 

So , you have no spark , even after trying the distributor and coil from a known running engine (the one that was removed) as well as the ones that came with this "rebuilt" engine , correct ?

Provided you are correctly installing these parts , and that the large pink wire has power and all engine grounds are good , that's an interesting problem indeed . If this has the computer controlled spark advance , have you tried to get it to spark with the spark advance wire disconnected ?

If it ran before the engine swap , I would doubt anything has seriously gone wrong with the car's wiring since the swap , again provided you didn't maul any harnesses or anything like that during the work .

Tell me , Is the distributor turning as your cranking the engine with the starter ? You say "Rebuilt many moons ago" , could there have been enough moons gone by to have the timing chain wear out and break ? Or for the distributor drive gear on the camshaft to have been worn down ?

 

Okay went through it all methodically today.
Put a spark plug in the coil output and clamped it in some jump leads and earthed it on the battery. I got spark from the coil.
Reconnected the coil to the cap and put the plug in one of the spark plug wires and had no spark.
Put on my new cap and rotor that I had and it is now sparking. Hooray.

Thought it would now start however it didn't. Will go through the timing tomorrow, maybe its 180 degrees out or something. Car would not even catch at all.