Going ballistic...

[Dan Hansen]

I´m litteraly on the edge of going ballistic... It started with a simple operation of replacing my stock distributor for a 1-2-3 BT Ignition, a simple job that has turned into a electrical nightmare?!

The car (with the electronic distributor) turned but hesitated to start, it gradually got worse until no reaction from the cylinders at all...

Back to the drawing-board, and installed the stock distributor once again, thinking it might be a faulty out of the box electronic distributor..? No reaction at all, engine turns, I smell fuel but no bang?

I have power to the coil, but no spark? I have tried to jump direct from the PLUS on the battery to the coil?

This is what I have done/replaced so far in my search of this gremlin:

* Coil

* Ballast resistor

* Sparkplug and cables

* Taken the entire wiring loom, from firewall to coil out, measured every cable, replaced the W/R wires with new ones, taped it all up again, before re install.

* Replaced the fuse able wire to the starter motor.

* Replaced the starter motor to a High Torque

* Replaced the Voltage Regulator 

* Replaced the ignition switch

* Replaced the stock tachometer with a 280 (77-78) electronic.

It turns but nothing happens, not even a impulse on the tach when cranking?

Gentlemen, I need some serious advice getting this one right, please help me out here

[SteveJ]

First, what model Z do you have? Is it a North American, European, or JDM model?

Here is a general test. If you have a digital voltmeter, put the positive lead on the negative terminal of the coil and the negative lead to ground. With the key on, it should read 9 to 12 volts. Have someone try to start the car while you are watching the voltmeter. If the voltage does not fluctuate significantly, you lost your trigger for spark. I'm not sure what distributor you have or what ignition source you have for your test right now.

[Dan Hansen]

23 minutes ago, SteveJ said:

First, what model Z do you have? Is it a North American, European, or JDM model?

Here is a general test. If you have a digital voltmeter, put the positive lead on the negative terminal of the coil and the negative lead to ground. With the key on, it should read 9 to 12 volts. Have someone try to start the car while you are watching the voltmeter. If the voltage does not fluctuate significantly, you lost your trigger for spark. I'm not sure what distributor you have or what ignition source you have for your test right now.

My Z are a North American model very early 1971, the distributor and ignition are all stock at this point... Only thing altered are the tachometer, that comes from a 280 (77-78)

[psdenno]

10 minutes ago, Dan Hansen said:

My Z are a North American model very early 1971, the distributor and ignition are all stock at this point... Only thing altered are the tachometer, that comes from a 280 (77-78)

Have you checked all wiring, again?  the manufacturer's write up says you can connect to a computer for set up.  Did you try that?

http://www.123ignition.nl/product.phtml?id=220

Dennis

[Dan Hansen]

6 minutes ago, psdenno said:

Have you checked all wiring, again?  the manufacturer's write up says you can connect to a computer for set up.  Did you try that?

http://www.123ignition.nl/product.phtml?id=220

Dennis

My 1-2-3 are a Bluetooth model, so no USB cables to attach...

 

[SteveJ]

45 minutes ago, Dan Hansen said:

My Z are a North American model very early 1971, the distributor and ignition are all stock at this point... Only thing altered are the tachometer, that comes from a 280 (77-78)

So with the key in the on position, you should see somewhere around 9VDC from the coil negative to ground. Did you check the gap in the points? This is where an old-fashioned tach/dwell meter can come in handy. If you have voltage from coil negative to ground and no signal on the tach, you know that either the points aren't closing or that the ground for the points is bad/missing.

[LeonV]

Did it ever run with the 280Z tach installed? How did you wire it in? The coil + BW wire runs through the tachometer and if you didn't bridge that when installing the 280Z tach, you will not have power to the coil.

[Zed Head]

2 hours ago, Dan Hansen said:

 operation of replacing my stock distributor for a 1-2-3 BT Ignition, 

The car (with the electronic distributor) turned but hesitated to start, it gradually got worse until no reaction from the cylinders at all...

installed the stock distributor once again, thinking it might be a faulty out of the box electronic distributor..? No reaction at all, engine turns, I smell fuel but no bang?

I have power to the coil, but no spark?

This is what I have done/replaced so far in my search of this gremlin:

* Coil

* Ballast resistor

* Sparkplug and cables

* Taken the entire wiring loom, from firewall to coil out, measured every cable, replaced the W/R wires with new ones, taped it all up again, before re install.

* Replaced the fuse able wire to the starter motor.

* Replaced the starter motor to a High Torque

* Replaced the Voltage Regulator 

* Replaced the ignition switch

* Replaced the stock tachometer with a 280 (77-78) electronic.

It turns but nothing happens, not even a impulse on the tach when cranking?

Gentlemen, I need some serious advice getting this one right, please help me out here

The order in which you did all of these things might be a clue.  Your first sentence implies that the 1-2-3 system produced some spark, but the engine would not start and run.  Is that correct?

It's not clear after that if you immediately reinstalled the points distributor or if you replaced all of those parts then installed the points distributor.  Kind of looks like you might have just got some wires wrong when you reinstalled the points distributor. 

Points systems are very easy to check since you can open and close the points by hand.  With a meter you can check that the circuit is being made and being broken, and that there is a circuit to ground.  Much less mystery than electronic systems.

[Mark Maras]

 Gut feeling. Have you considered a bad ignition condenser? A bad one is hard to diagnose and can have one chasing one's tail. I don't know how to test one. Back in the day, we'd just install a new one. They were cheap back then and still less than $10.00 at O'Reilly's today.

[SteveJ]

1 hour ago, LeonV said:

Did it ever run with the 280Z tach installed? How did you wire it in? The coil + BW wire runs through the tachometer and if you didn't bridge that when installing the 280Z tach, you will not have power to the coil.

That is  exactly the reason for the test I described. 

In this case, I chose a location in the middle of the circuit.  If the first part of the test fails, the problem is between the key and coil. If the second part fails, the problem is between the coil and ground.

[Zed Head]

4 hours ago, Dan Hansen said:

Back to the drawing-board, and installed the stock distributor once again,

I wonder if the "stock" distributor was stock to a 240Z.

The good news is that it used to run.  

It's almost midnight in Copenhagen.  11:43 pm.

 

[Dan Hansen]

17 hours ago, Mark Maras said:

 Gut feeling. Have you considered a bad ignition condenser? A bad one is hard to diagnose and can have one chasing one's tail. I don't know how to test one. Back in the day, we'd just install a new one. They were cheap back then and still less than $10.00 at O'Reilly's today.

I put a new condensator on the orig. distributor...