Thanks to those who chimed in recently about my %^^%! ignition problem.
The Tiger would run fine sometimes, but then develop a stalling problem,
and "bumping", like the key was turned off, and then back on real fast.
It got chronic over the last few days, which did not bode well for the
1,000 mile or so trip to Park City for SUNI IV.
I've got a Pertronix Ingnitor II and Flamethrower II ignition and I
havde been blamining, or suspecting , it as the cause of the problem. I
again talked to their tech. support about the problem today. They did
say it's conceivable, but not likely, that the ignition module was the
problem, and usually they either work, or don't. They gave me some more
tests to run, but said they really suspected the wiring between the coil
and the ignition key was causing too much resistance. Their test is to
ground out the coil with a lead from the negative side to engine ground,
turn the key to the on position, and read voltage at the positive coil
terminal. Dead cold in the morning, I gotr only about 7.5 volts. I then
ran the car to running temp. and tried it again, getting a reading of
about 8.4. (The coil, by the way, has a .9 ohm resistance in it. New
it was .6 as they advertised it. Pertronix says this is well in their
acceptable range). The solid white wire from the ignition switch to the
tach go the coil put out a full 12.5 volts, as long as it wasn't
connected to the coil, but as soon as I touched it to the coil positive
post, I only got those low readings (about 8.4 volts). Pertronix said
this is too low and that anything below 9 volts could cause the module
to stop functioning.
I traced the wire back from the coil to the ignition switch. My thanks
to Ron Fraser who suggested I bypass the tach and see what happened.
Getting under the dash I immediately noticed that the wire going to and
from the tach was very hot, too hot to hold for long. I had previously
wrapped a couple of lengths of wire around the signal plug on the back
of the tach so it would read with my electronic ignition. I had not done
a good job of splicing that extra wire in though, which caused the wires
to really heat up. I installed new, tight connections in those wires,
the heat went away, and the voltage reading at the coil, with it
grounded out as I mentioned earlier, went from 8.4 up to 10.4 volts.
I'm lucky I didn't cause a wiring fire under the dash, but the problem
seems solved. Cool wires, plenty of voltage at the coil, and hopefully
an uneventful trip up and back from SUNI.
Thanks for the help!
Steve Sage
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