I just experienced an intermittent misfire during the last session of the
weekend, and immediately assume that the problem is the Crane electronics.
I am going to try to isolate the problem without throwing parts at it. I am
thinking I will go back to tradition as well. Anyone know what Mallory unit
is appropriate, what modifications I need to make, and have a coil
recommendation?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Young" <cartravel@pobox.com>
To: "Jack W. Drews" <vinttr4@geneseo.net>
Cc: <fot@autox.team.net>
Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 10:41 AM
Subject: Re: [FOT] ignition systems
> My only experience is with Pertronix. I don't find these difficult to
> diagnose. Most of us old geezers that grew up with points automatically
> assume the Ignitor has failed when we have ignition problems. The first
> thing they do is put points back in. My first test is to attach a known
> good spark plug directly to the coil. This removes the rotor, cap, wires
> and spark plug from the equation. If I get a spark on all cylinders, then
> there is nothing wrong with the ignitor, so you can go on to check cap,
> rotor, wires and spark plug. If you get a spark on some, but not all
> cylinders, then the magnetic ring is bad. If you get no sparks, then the
> Ignitor is not working. I recently used this approach on my TR250 to
> determine that one magnet in the magnetic ring was flipped over so the
> wrong pole was facing outward. This is the way it came out of the box. I
> suppose you could also have a bad coil. My experience is that coils
> seldom fail, but you could swap that out with a good one to confirm.
> Larry Young
>
> Jack W. Drews wrote:
>
>> I only have experience with three different electronic ignition systems,
>> so I'm not an expert on them. The one thing they have is common, for me
>> as a racer / user, is that when something goes wrong, it is hard to find
>> what it is and usually impossible to fix, unless I have whole redundant
>> system along with me. If I have a conventional system, I can fix it with
>> a continuity tester and a small supply of relatively cheap parts -- it's
>> got to be the wire coming to the system, or the cap, rotor, points,
>> condenser, or coil.
>>
>> I used an electronic ignition system in m race car for ten years and it
>> worked okay, but when it did fail I had to put in a conventional
>> distributor to find out if the brain box was bad. Likewise last week when
>> my TR6 suddenly quit running and coasted to a stop -- I had no idea if
>> the Prtronix quit or something else happened.
>>
>> uncle jack
>
>
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