Hi again.
Thank you all for your thoughtful suggestions regarding my stubborn
ignition system. I will be ordering new cap and rotor today and
given my proximity to British Parts Northwest, I usually get the
parts I ordered the next day, even with UPS Ground. It's great!
What bothers me about this whole thing, though, is that I'm relying
on a HUGE multiple coincidence if I am to suspect that the cap and
rotor are so bad that together, they won't allow the car to start.
Having said that, it does appear, from the looks of the terminals
inside the cap, that a new cap isn't such a bad idea anyway. I'm
already puzzled by the extent of this failure:
The one thing that I KNOW happened at that moment while driving on
Highway 20 here in Bend is that the ignition switch let go. All at
once the engine stammered very briefly and then died. But while I
was wiggling wires alongside Highway 20 in the bitter cold, I noticed
that the 'purple' fuse was blown. A grabbed a spare, stuck it in the
socket and ZAP. It was blown in an instant. The common link between
the brown wires that feed the purple fuse and the white wires which
feed the green fuse and the coil, is the ignition switch. I
confirmed the fate of the old ignition switch with an ohmmeter. So
now I've replaced the ignition switch (and I verified its operation
with the ohmmeter, too) and now I've got the power back at the coil
but I still have this weird short somewhere, apparently in the purple
circuit, that will blow the purple fuse the instant the battery
ground strap is connected.
So I'm ALREADY dealing with what appears to be a very strange
coincidence, in that somehow the ignition switch failure triggered a
short circuit somewhere in the 'downstream' side of the purple fuse,
which makes no sense to me at all in terms of cause-and-effect. Yet
this appears to be the reality. You may as well tell me that a turn
signal bulb failure can cause a flat tire! So if that's not bad
enough, now it's looking like somehow the ignition switch failure
pushed the cap and rotor over the edge as well! I mean, isn't this
just too weird? What's next? Am I to discover that now the brakes
don't work either?
Regardless, it does make sense that my ignition problem is in the cap
& rotor. It really does. From all appearances, the Allison
electronic ignition module is probably okay as it WAS generating a
spark at the coil wire. The Lucas Sport coil itself is only about 2
years old. I'll order the parts today and stick them in tomorrow
evening and the thing will probably start right up. Very weird.
Thank you all for you help, and sorry if I sound a bit incredulous
about the cap & rotor suggestions. It really does seem like that's
the problem
it's just difficult to believe, as I don't generally
believe in such coincidences.
--
Pete Chadwell
1973 TR6
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