OT: marine 454 no spark from coil

sorry for the cross post.

A friends got an old speed boat (think 70's classic style speed boat) with a 454. He's been working on it recently and had the engine out. After putting it back in and hooking up all the wires the way they were before (known working). It wont spark... No spark coming out of the coil when the wire is held near the block, and the engine turned over.

He's replaced the coil, and condenser, and we've tried changing ground points, and making sure all the wiring is connected and more or less sound. There isn't a WHOLE lot of wiring to this thing. At one point we had the key in the on position while working on something and the new coil was pretty hot, so we thought we might have had the wires on the coil reversed, after switching them the coil went back to just being warm.

Then we did some informal circuit testing (read: looked for some spark when grounding the wires that go to the coil terminals) the coil is most definitely getting current (spark from the negative wires when touching them to the block, spark from the positives when touching them to the positive coil terminal), but nothing is coming out of it where it matters ;)

Anyway what are some likely candidates? Bad ground somewhere is my guess... two bad coils and/or two bad condensers doesn't seem likely. Current isn't getting to the distributor if the coil isn't sending it so that's out of the troubleshooting loop right? The starter certainly is getting current (turns the engine just fine) and there's a little solenoid (not the starter solenoid) that is in the circuit between the key and the coil... this could be bad, but then if it's the problem why is the coil getting current when the key is on?

Any thoughts much appreciated.

Reply to
Simon Juncal
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Does it have a ballast resistor in the ignition circuit? Some of them have a start circuit and a run circuit. These resistors will have 4 terminals on them. That's what it sounds like to me.

Chris

Reply to
c

If the coil is heating up, that means there's current going through it.

Use a meter or test light (to grd) at the neg side of the coil as you open and close points.

if you never see 8 - 12 volts to ground, and there's only the wire to the dist hooked up there, then something in the dist is shorted.

12V - - ballast res -- coil pos| coil neg - - dist points/condenser- - grd | - - start sol- - |
Reply to
Backyard Mechanic

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