Please help. flathead no spark

I have a very very short season and I'm loosing it because my 46 flay head ford 239 cu in truck has no spark..please guys,,reach out..it's a 6v pos ground.. I had the distributor out putting a pertronix electronic pick up in..it failed..put points back in and no fire in over a month.. could someone please in plain English tell me what wire goes where..I have neg to power from coil..positive from coil to distributor ..is the coil to be grounded.. what the hell is wrong here.. I had distributor checked by a mechanic who agrees I have it right and no shorts.. coil sparks on another battery with spark plugs.. I am beat.
Please

 

See if you can have this moved to the main board.

 

You might edit the thread title to “please help flathead no spark” or similar to get more attention. Someone here knows I’m certain.

 

points are clean? if new wiped for oil residue. Tried running a hotwire straight from battery to coil?
Trying to find a wiring diagram for you.

 

Neg goes coil to distributor, after all your making ground when points close, positive from ignition switch to coil.

Run a hot wire from battery positive terminal straight to positive on coil and see if it starts, if it does you have problem from ignition switch to coil.

If it doesn't then you have bad coil, bad points, points out of adjustment, etc on distributor side.

 

@squirrel , can you help us once again with positive ground?

 

I would check all wiring, coil and connections and move on to testing the distributor and components.

 

Do you have a "Multi-Meter"? If so, use it (we can help with that); if not, get one.

 

With a test light, turn on the ignition and see if you have power to the coil at the wire that comes from the ignition switch. If not that's your problem.

 

Positive ground, means that the wire from the points is Positive when they close. So the wire from the distributor, goes to the Positive side of the coil.

The "hot" side of the battery is Negative, so you connect the Negative battery terminal to the BAT terminal on the ignition switch. Then connect the IGN terminal on the ignition switch to the Negative side of the coil.

We can't see it, pictures are a great help! please post some

 

with a full charge on the battery
and the ignition in the on position, using a test lamp or volt meter do you get juice to the negative side (not the distributor side) of the coil?
if you do
remove the distributor cap and with a flat blade screwdriver gently open or short across the points
do you get a visible spark there?
if you do
pull one plug, reconnect the plug wire and lay the plug on something grounded,
crank the engine over and watch for spark.

if all those failed it could be a bad condenser, a poorly grounded distributor or engine block
or several other things

6 volts can produce a pretty weak spark
and of course it will crank over slow but it shouldn't take much to fire it up.

 

Flathead Electrical Wiring Diagrams (vanpeltsales.com)
Don't know if any of this might help you.

 

The coil is not grounded and I believe you have it connected properly. As others have said, you need to verify that you have power (using a voltmeter) at the ignition - terminal of the coil. If you do, I would bump the engine over until the points are open, you should have the same power at the + terminal of the coil. If you do not, the coil is bad. If you bump the engine over until the points close the power at the + terminal should go to zero while the power at the - terminal stays about the same. If that doesn't happen, there is a problem in the distributor wiring or the points, or the ground at the distributor.

If those things are happening, you should have a spark.

 

The points ground the coil to have the primary winding create the magnetic field that collapses and creates the spark when the points open. The condensor is the shock absorber for the points so spark doesn't jump the points.

Now to the knitty gritty. how did you have the distributor set when you adjusted the points? I've lost track of how many cars and trucks that the owner put new points in that wouldn't start that I went out and looked at in the past 60 years but 90% of those people had adjusted the points with the rubbing block from the points on the flat rather than the tip of the cam and the points end up opening wider rather than closing and opening .

On a late flathead but back when I was 16 and changed my points in my 51 Merc for the first time I put the wire or lead for the points on the wrong side of the insulator and ended up with a no fire condition. That gave my shop teacher a big laugh when I asked him about it.

 

Would be good to hear if you had any luck Doug
As l mentioned earlier running a hot wire from battery straight to coil is a simple quick way to eliminate dodgy wiring, resistors, connections etc
I had no luck finding a good 6 v+earth diagram

 

Did you put the condenser back in after removing the Pertronix?