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Need ignition help please

Need ignition help please

gr8dain

Full Time Jeeper
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Location
Ashburn, VA
Vehicle(s)
'84 CJ-8
So here is the situation. Last Friday night I was driving home from work. Turning a corner out of a shopping center, the jeep just cut off. Could not restart. Checked the fuel. It was getting gas.

A similar thing happened (same spot actually) back in January. That was fixed with a new coil. So I suspected the coil went bad again (GM HEI from MSD).

So came back from a business trip and bought a new coil tonight. No luck. I have 12.22 v at the hot wire going into the coil. But using an inline spark tester, there is no spark coming out.

Any ideas? I don't want to just throw new parts at it. Thanks in advance.

By the way, it is the AMC 258 i6 / 4.2l with HEI (obviously).
 
So here is the situation. Last Friday night I was driving home from work. Turning a corner out of a shopping center, the jeep just cut off. Could not restart. Checked the fuel. It was getting gas.

A similar thing happened (same spot actually) back in January. That was fixed with a new coil. So I suspected the coil went bad again (GM HEI from MSD).

So came back from a business trip and bought a new coil tonight. No luck. I have 12.22 v at the hot wire going into the coil. But using an inline spark tester, there is no spark coming out.

Any ideas? I don't want to just throw new parts at it. Thanks in advance.

By the way, it is the AMC 258 i6 / 4.2l with HEI (obviously).


Is the distributor making a good ground?
 
Dizzy ICM would be my first guess.
LG
 
Update. The control module was not bad. A friend came over with a complete distributor and we swapped one part at a time until it worked. Turns out it was the coil. The new coil I got was bad as well. I am back up and running. For now.
 
You shouldn't be going through coils like that. Did you get ah high quality HEI or one of the others?
 
I got an MSD coil. And I actually think it is good and that I have a different issue. I got it running on saturday by reinstalling the previous coil. It ran fine all weekend. Then on the way into work the darn thing died on me again. I went out to the lot I left it in at lunch but was unsuccessful in getting it started. I am looking on a chevythunder website to troubleshoot but will have to get it home first. May be my pick up coil? I would hate to buy a $390 distributer complete if I don't need to.
 
Well, that sucks, sorry to hear it. As usual, when you find the problem it will be something small. At least I hope that's the case. Are you getting any spark at all?
 
There can only be a few places that could cause that problem. There is always the ever present quality ground issue. How is your coil wire? They can look good but break down internally. Then there is the part that talks to the coil which is the guts of the distributor of course. You could have an electrical leak in there. ..... how is you battery, are you getting a full 12 volts from it?
 
Yes. Getting 12.2v. All of the wires look good. I was even looking at the wires from the coil to the capacitor and they look good. Someone pointed me to checythunder.com for troubleshooting. Looks like I will be following those steps when I have free time. Until then, I am getting towed home again and will have to bum rides to work and back and wherever else I need to go.
 

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