i bought the 49 dodge in october and just put a 12 volt battery in it with negative ground and it fired up and ran great. i drove my 50 plymouth everywhere like that as well. anyway i started it up a couple times before christmas. now its march and it won`t start at all. i threw some points in it and set them. new cap , 12 volt coil and plugs. i am getting fire between the points but none at the plug??? some of the wiring looks horrible and i intend on replacing most of it. right now i just wanna start it up and move it around. nothing worse than a 2 ton lawn ornament that won`t run...
Sounds like ya got too much voltage. Ya might want to screw on the firewall a balace resister. That is what I had to do wehn I switched the whole wiring to 12 volt setup. I found out that that had to be done too for the car to run right. Have you checked your generator? It may be draining power from the battery. Worth a check. KNUX!
did you change everything over to 12 volt like a 12 volt alternater and a 12 volt starter solenoid? or just the battery and coil? more details....
i put a new condensor in it as well. i`m just wanting to fire it up enough to move it around. like i said it was fine last october with the 12 volt battery. i drove my 50 plymouth like that forever. i just changed the coil , condensor, battery and used a chevy alt. anyone has ve a wiring diagram? or know exactly where the wires to and from the coil go to?
The coil should have two wires, but could have three. One is switched battery on for ignition, the same terminal could be two wires, one battery hot during crank, the other hot battery limited by the ceramic resistor. The other goes to the points and condenser. If you see spark at the points means the points contact is sparking when you crank there's a mismatch between voltage, coil, condenser. If you mean you pulled the coil wire and cranked and whacked a bigone to block that means the points capacitor coil are probably ok.
yeah pete, i`m definetely seeing spark between the contact points.. what do i do to remedy the situation?
make sure you have spark at the plugs. grab a spare plug, pull a plug wire put the wire on the plug lay it on the head so it's grounded and crank over the motor. if you got spark put the plug wire back on plug you removed it from dump a little gas down the carb an crank it over should start then if not plugs could be gas fouled, if they are replace them give it a drink of fuel and crank it over. make sure your battery is fully charged. good luck.
I think something is wrong with your conversion from 6 volt positive ground to 12 volt negative ground. If your 50 Plymouth is still working, double-check that the Dodge is wired the same. Sounds like you have some crispy wires or components due to a wiring error. Hard to diagnose something like this long distance w/o any pics or diagrams. Also, try the Search function for 6 to 12 volt conversions.
have you tried running a jumper wire straight from the battery positive to the coil positive? that's how I fire stubborn old engines the first time. check the wire from the negative side of the coil into the distributor, and check that little ******* of a ground wire inside. That's your path. If all the wires check out, you have a faulty component.
If you have spark across the points but no spark from the coil, I'd suspect the coil is bad (new or not). If you do not have a resistor between the ign switch and the coil, neither the coil nor the points will last very long. It's pretty normal to have an arc across the points if there is 12 volts going through them. Most of the time you will fry a coil before the points will be nonfunctioning (though some coils are tough muthers), all the points have to do is open far enough to break the circut, then the primary voltage surges back to the coil causing the spark from the coil secondary. The condenser acts as a shock absorber for the points. If you have spark out of the coil (wire) then either the cap or rotor or plug wires are bad. Gene
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