Jeff,
Take dizzy cap off (leave wires attached) Turn key to on... with your
fingers open and close the points. Should here clicking or see sparks. If
not, verify the low-tension lead is in tact.
Better yet, assuming you have an electrical tach, while cranking does
the
needle move? If yes, then coil is firing and points are working, If no,
then coil is NOT firing, then go to paragraph above.
HTH Peter C
----
At 11:02 AM 7/21/99 , you wrote:
>Well, after writing a long answer to the "Do you like your car?" question
>at the cartalk site, going on and on about how reliable my Sprite has been,
>it died this morning on the way to work. There is a God, and she's not
>happy with me!
>
>Anyway, the conditions are that I was cruising through a neighborhood at
>about 20 mph and the car very suddenly died - no gasping, etc. Upon
>inspection, I found that plenty of fuel was getting to the carbs. The
>starter still turns the engine over, and in fact turns it fast enough to
>register healthy oil pressure (40+). Both fuses are intact. All other
>electrics work. To check whether I have spark, I turned the ignition key to
>'on', pulled a plug wire, inserted a metal rod into the lead, held the rod
>close to the plug tip, then cranked the engine using the remote starter
>button in the engine compartment. There was no spark. I don't know if the
>is the correct procedure for this test, though. One thing I did not check
>is whether the rockers are moving (i.e., is the timing chain intact) by
>looking into the oil fill hole while cranking the engine.
>
>Assuming that I'm testing for spark correctly, and given that I'm getting
>none at any plug, I think that either the coil or the dizzy could be at
>fault. What do you think? I'm somewhat anxious to resolve this as this is
>my only car.
>
>TIA,
>
>Jeff
>
>Jeff Boatright '65 Sprite MkIII __o_\__
>http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~jboatri/
>
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