Got one in mine - but then it is rarely used on road, so it is quite useable while pottering round the property or driving down to the village (only the last kilometre is on road - barely get into fourth/overdrive). JD
i just fitted a kenwood cd player into the old girl yesterday. i can hear it easily, however the 6 cylinder rover motor is a much much quiter piece of work than the 2.25.
Sam.
seems you were right about the coil JD. had a look at it and in plain writing it had written on it "sports coil, for use with a resistor." the previous owner obviously hadn't twigged and just plugged the coil straight in without installing a resistor. quick look under the hood of the old 164 volvo i'm wrecking and i found what i wanted. resitor is now installed and should hopefully give the old points a bit more life.
Sam.
Glad to hear you have found a definite cause! JD
In message , Samuel writes
Have you wired it to be bypassed when starting? The idea is to put full
12v across the coil when starting to compensate for drop in voltage whilst cranking, but then the resistor drops it to about 9v in normal running.
is that so? it makes perfect sense, but it wasn't set up like that on the volvo. and shes fires up fine anyway so isn't much of a concern. i've got a fresh large heavy-duty battery in which doesn't even break sweat, and i plan on plonking another in parallel with it shouldn't be much voltage drop anyway. but thanks for the info, will remember that.
Sam.
The dropping resistor was originally devised for American cars with large engines and six volt batteries, where the ignition was really struggling with the voltage drop when starting. It was later adopted for engines that were hard to start for various reasons. Your engine was never hard to start, and originally used a 12v coil with no dropping resistor. The coil you have should work as an equivalent with the resistor. Note that even with the resistor, it probably draws more current than the original coil. JD
I had a Renault12 some years ago and the resistor was in the wire from the ignition switch to the coil. It broke so I put a ballast resistor on top of the coil and wired in a switch to bypass it manually when starting. Made a good anti-theft device too.
MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.