I have had an intermittent coil problem with a Pertronix coil- new. Changed
back to an old Lucas sport coil, problem went away. Cold, the coil was fine.
Hot, it sometimes did not function.
Yes, Woody is correct. The Mallory needs a ballast resistor to drop the
voltage. Mallory part #700, or use one for an old Chrysler product. This
assumes you are using points type ignition, or Mallory electronic ignition.
Although Woody swears by the Mallory set up, I tried it & not only was not
impressed, I had a number of problems. Mallory did take care of them, but I
think the car runs better with a Pertronix in a stock GM distributor. I
don't like doing without vacuum advance in a street machine. Race motors are
a different story.
Jim Stuart
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-mgb-v8@autox.team.net [mailto:owner-mgb-v8@autox.team.net]On
Behalf Of Rick Huber
Sent: Tuesday, July 31, 2001 9:18 PM
To: mgb-v8@autox.team.net
Subject: Intermittent Coil Problem ?
Hi All,
After a fabulous weekend in the V8 MGB, I've got a question. At the
Positive
Earth Driver's Club show in Lavalette NJ on Sunday, I had the hardest time
starting the car that I've had in a long time. Dave somebody, drives a
chevvy
V6 powered MGB GT, flared fenders, no bumpers, says he knows a bunch of you
guys, was there and helped troubleshoot.
What happens is that just after starting and before the engine is warmed up,
it's very easy to kill it by letting out the clutch too fast. Usually when
that
happens, it is very difficult to restart. Usually, after cranking for
awhile
giving it just a little gas, I smell gas, do the flooded routine pushing the
pedal to the floor, crank for awhile, let up on the pedal, crank again and
it
starts. This time nothin doin. It smelled really flooded, so I let it sit
30
minutes. Tried again, nothing - not a cough, sputter, lots of gas smell.
Well,
as I was embarrasingly gathering quite a crowd, Dave came over with a test
light
and started troubleshooting. First thing he did was pull the coil wire, had
me
crank it, and said I had no spark. Funny, I had a spark driving to the show,
and
when the engine started and died when I was first trying to leave, but I
said
maybe. He looked at the standard stock MGB coil, the Mallory electronic
ignition distributor, the coil leads, nothing to see. Asked if I still had
the
resistor in the line to the coil that drops the voltage down to 7.5 v (I
think)
from 12. I said yes, I had never found it, but I had tested the power to
the
coil and it was around 7.5 v. Seems like I remember Woody Cooper saying I
needed to have that voltage drop to run the Mallory distributor, but my
memory
could be incorrect there. Dave said my frequent hard starting problem might
be
that I was supposed to have the full 12 v to the coil, and if I didn't, I
was
getting a weak spark, and when I got too much gas in the cylinders, it won't
fire.
Anyway, he was checking to see that the return wire from the distributor was
correctly pulsing back to the coil, when it fired once. Then I cranked it
again, and it started, drove home, stopped, restarted fine.
So my question is, is there such a thing as an intermittent coil ? I'm
thinking
it could be connections, but Dave said he really didn't find anything
disconnected. This happened about 1 1/2 years ago, when after swapping my
clutch, it started right up, then while sitting at a stop sign about 2
blocks
from the shop, it just died. Cranked and cranked, did some troubleshooting,
and
discovered no spark from the coil. I took out the new coil, put in the old
one,
and it started. At that point, I figured it was a bad new coil, but now I'm
not
so sure. I think I'll try to put the new, supposedly bad one back in this
weekend and see what happens.
Any of this sound familiar to anybody ? Anybody have a clue what's going on
?
I'm off for a couple days and can't check my @home mail from away, so if you
have any more questions, I'll get to them Friday night or Saturday morning.
Thanks in advance for the help.
Safety Faster,
Rick
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