Posted by Keith in Washington on Thursday, November 18, 2004 at 11:51AM :
Finally got my 52 ff PW running. It seems to be a couple of things that were causing problems but the big issue is low voltage.
I had a spark the whole time but it appears weak. I had 6.5 volts at the battery and at the Batt term on the ignition switch. However I have 4.5 volts at the IGN terminal of the switch and at the coil. This I think is the major problem. Additionally, the carb seems to be rich at idle and requires no choke on starting so I was possibly flooding it by pulling the choke. But the engine never kicked at all when trying to start it. I finally took a wire and ran it from the battery directly to the coil and cranked for a while and it started up finally. It ran just fine once it kicked over. I checked everything, dwell, timing, vaccum and physically checked the distribtor and parts. Everything was good.
I suspect the real problem is the low voltage at the ignition post of the switch which gives me low voltage at the coil and therefore a weaker spark. Looks like I need a new ignition switch. Interesting This will be the 3rd ignition switch I have replaced in 6 months on different vehicles.
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