TheSamba.com :: View topic - Won't start after points & cond. replaced

Fri Jan 07, 2011 2:37 pm

Gertie's starts were getting progressively harder, often requiring a second (or third) turn of the key to finally kick the engine over, so I suspected the points.

I adjusted the valves first since they were overdue anyway; nothing was amiss.

I inspected the rotor and cleaned it up a bit by lightly brushing it with an emery board. The contacts in the cap didn't look so hot, but not terrible. I ordered a new cap and rotor anyway, which will arrive tomorrow.

I removed the old points and sure enough one point had a crater and the other a mountain.

I replaced them and the condenser, got them to about 0.016" in anticipation of doing the timing, and now it won't start. Crankedy-crankedy-crankedy-crankedy, nice and even but obviously no spark. Plug wires are on in order, everything's back together correctly. There is plenty of gas.

Frustrating.

Fri Jan 07, 2011 3:22 pm

Did the ground wire inside the distributor happen to come loose? It's a small braided wire that grounds the advance plate to the dist. case.

Or it could be a bad condenser?

Fri Jan 07, 2011 3:51 pm

Though I got it from someone whom I think I can trust, the new condensor didn't look exactly the same as the old one. The old one was the style where the metal strap that straps the condensor to the dizzy has a fork (for lack of a better term) on it where you push the gray plastic plug onto. The new one didn't.
On a whim, I put the old condensor back on. I should've done just that and no more, but since I'm not appropriately scientific I also hit the contacts in the distributor cap with an emery board to clean them up.
The car fired right up.
I don't know if it was the cleaning of the contacts, or the replacement of the condensor that did the trick.

Fri Jan 07, 2011 3:57 pm

The new condenser could have been grounding out, since it was not the right one.
Rarely, do condensers go bad. In my experience, I think I have found 1 bad one.

Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:00 pm

Why are we focused on the ignition? Have you ruled out compression yet?

Max

Fri Jan 07, 2011 5:27 pm

Max Welton wrote: Why are we focused on the ignition? Have you ruled out compression yet?

Max

I focused on ignition because it was the only system I'd really messed with. Aside from the hard starting (cured by the new points), the car ran fine before I replaced the condenser. Now that I put the old one back, it runs fine again.

Fri Jan 07, 2011 7:14 pm

whc03grady wrote: Max Welton wrote: Why are we focused on the ignition? Have you ruled out compression yet?

Max

I focused on ignition because it was the only system I'd really messed with. Aside from the hard starting (cured by the new points), the car ran fine before I replaced the condenser. Now that I put the old one back, it runs fine again.

excellent troubleshooting right there. it ran before you messed with the ign, didn't run afterwards. could only be bad ign parts or operator error. Damn thats 2 new condensors in two days on here, in the business world that would indicate a trend.