My '18 Dodge Brothers distributor has me baffled. The ground contact of the points is insulated from the distributor body, and there's a ground wire that goes to the condensor for an apparant internal ground. I've never seen this on another ignition system. Any one understand why they didn't just ground to the body? It has the normal wire to the other contact.
Can you wait till Hershey to talk with an expert? A elderly friend is a life long early Dodge guy, and has a couple spaces there. He gets in early and leaves by friday or even thurs night if the weather is iffy.
Could be a early positive ground system.....They would power up the one side (condensor side) and the other wire would go to ground...
Early cars solved problems in unique ways, that is part of the challenge. Does the ground go through the condenser?? Might be what they were thinking, though not sure that would actually work. Cosmo
Thanks for the help, this is negative ground. The ground wire goes into the condensor. It obviously is broken or not connected in some way as I have no continuity. I put my own ground wire to the base of the distributor and now have spark at the points. I'm just trying to figure out why they would have gone through this much trouble to first insulate the ground contact then ground it internally in the condensor. My other DB with the same system works as designed.
Well, I found out why. The points ground through the ignition switch. The ground side is insulated because the ignition switch reverses polarity every time you start the car. It was done to reduce point wear. It's a crazy setup that was only used about a year or so.
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