'86 560SL no ignition spark???

Hi,

I have an '86 560SL with 101,000 miles. It was running perfect until I parked it this afternoon. Went back to drive it and it won't start. The starter turns it over good but it never fires. So I tried a spark plug wire and no spark. Then I pulled the coil wire off the distributor and no spark there either.

What should I try / replace to get it going again?

Thanks,

Joe

Reply to
jc7
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How did you check for a spark at the coil wire? If you disconnect the coil wire from the distributor and place it near a ground, you should only get one spark (if that) right when you turn the ignition on. It won't spark continously as you're cranking the engine.

First off, check the battery voltage. It should be close to 12.6V. Even a reading as low as 12V means that the battery is half-discharged. When you're cranking the engine, the voltage is going to drop down even further, and some computer-controlled ignitions won't produce a spark below a certain voltage, even if the battery is still strong enough to turn the starter.

If the battery voltage isn't at least 12.5V, I'd put it on a charger until it's fully-charged.

Assuming the battery's good, I would pull the cap and rotor and examine the terminals inside, as well as the spring-loaded connection between the rotor and the cap.

If that looks good, use an ohmmeter and measure the resistance of the primary and secondary windings of the coil. (I'm not familiar with your exact engine, but I'm assuming the coil has a positive terminal, a negative terminal, and the connection for the coil-to-distributor wire. While you're at it, measure the resistance of the wire from the coil to the distributor - it should be significantly less than 1000 Ohms.

Disconnect all the connections to the coil, and measure the resistance between the positive terminal and the negative terminal. You should get a low reading (less than three Ohms). Make sure it's not zero, though, because that would mean a shorted winding (bad coil).

Next, measure the resistance between the negative terminal and the coil output terminal (the one that leads to the distributor). That should be higher, somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 Ohms. If it's somewhere close to that range, the coil's probably good, but a zero reading means the secondary winding is shorted, and an infinite reading means that the secondary winding is open. Both of these indicate a bad coil.

If the coil checks good, reconnect all of the wires to it, and turn the ignition on. Check the voltage at the postive terminal of the coil - it should be very close to battery voltage. If it's not, you have a problem with the wiring to the coil. If the positive terminal voltage is good, then you have a problem further upstream than the coil - maybe a computerized ignition system?

I wouldn't hurt to check all of the fuses, too. Don't just look at them to see if they're blown - pull each one out, check it with an ohmmeter, and then put them back in.

Hope this helps,

Reply to
Scott Gardner

Good luck - let us know. I wouldn't worry about trying for a spark from the coil wire - if you have the wire too far from the ground when you turn on the ignition, you can possibly damage the electronic ignition. (Not likely, but there's no reason to take the chance when the voltage and resistance checks will tell you everything you need to know about the condition of the coil.

I'd still do the resistance check on the coil wire itself, though.

(Continue reading only if you're interested in how an ignition coil works)

An ignition coil is really two concentric coils wound around each other, but not making physical contact. The primary winding has a low resistance (I'll use 3 ohms as an example), and the secondary winding has a high resistance (I'll use 10000 ohms). The 12V battery voltage applied across the primary winding sets up a current of 4 amps (12V divided by 3 ohms) in the primary winding. Since the two windings are wound around one another, this causes a magnetic field that also sets up a 4-amp current in the secondary winding.

When the distributor rotor hits one of the spark plug terminals inside the cap, the secondary winding now has a path to ground through the sparkplug. A coil resists any change in current, so it will try to maintain the same 4-amp current it had before it was grounded. The only way it can do this with its 10000-ohm resistance is to set up a very large voltage (in this case, 40,000 volts, which is 4 amps multiplied by 10000 ohms.) This is a high-enough voltage to bridge the gap between the spark plug electrode and the spark plug body, so you get a nice fat spark to ignite your air/fuel mixture.

As the rotor continues past the spark plug terminal, the circuit is broken and the secondary winding has a few milliseconds to be "charged back up" by the primary winding before the distributor rotor gets to the next spark plug terminal and it all happens again.

So, anything that increases the resistance of the primary winding, or decreases the resistance of the secondary winding, will decrease the voltage from the secondary winding, and you may not get a spark. The most-common problem is an open or shorted winding, which you'll detect when you do the resistance checks.

Reply to
Scott Gardner

OK, I will take the coil into work to check the resistance from pos to neg. My cheap meter looks like 0 ohms. It won't clearly resolve 3 ohms.

I expected some resistance from the spark out terminal to the coil body ground / mount but it shows an open connection. Is this to be expected?

Thanks, Joe

Reply to
jc7

I don't know what the resistance should be between the negative terminal of the coil and ground - it may even change depending on whether the distributor rotor came to rest between two spark plug terminals or in contact with one.

The only two values I'd worry about are the resistance between the positive and negative terminals, and between the negative terminal and the output terminal.

I'm wondering if your meter truly won't resolve a resistance of three ohms, or if your primary winding is shorted - I'm looking forward to hearing what you find out at work.

Reply to
Scott Gardner

My meter is a cheap analog meter marked off in 100ohm increments.

The coil checked out good. I ended up taking it to the shop. It was the crank position sensor.

Thanks for the help,

Joe

Reply to
jc7

replying to jc7, Anthony white wrote: Firing from plugs but not from coil

Reply to
Anthony white

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