I took my T-Bucket out on the road today...

[mr27t]

and had a little problem. I pulled up to a stop light and while waiting for the light to change the engine stalled. It just flat-lined- no stumble or any warning it was going to die out at all!

I'm thinking okay what's happening now? I tried to restart it but no good, the fires were out and not co-operating. I pushed it off to the side of the road and went to troubleshooting. It did not act like it ran out of fuel although I know I have a little crap in the fuel tank. I thought maybe I have clogged fuel line. Then I reached over and touched the ignition coil with my hand and it was way to hot to the touch. I have a point type distributor with an Accel points eliminator module installed and matching ignition coil. Now I don't know if it stalled because of the coil overheating or if it ran out of fuel due to a fuel clog.

After a few minutes I was able to restart the engine and I drove back home no problems at all.

That does not mean there is not a problem on the horizon for me with it though.

So I guess I have two things to repair, clean my fuel tank, change my fuel filter, clear the fuel lines and figure out why my ignition coil gets hot enough to BBQ on.

 

[oldtman]

is there supposed to be a resistor in the run circuiot to the coil .the old points system used a resistor to only have 9 volts to the coil in the run position. 12 V during start since the starter draw will drop available voltage to the ignition system. If they didn't have a resistor the coil would overheat. I was driving truck and had a wiring harness failure. I hot wired it with 12 volts and it finally exploded the coil before we got it back to the shop.

 

[Martin]

Sounds to me like you just have a bad coil. If you have an electronic module in the distributor, dont put a resistor in, it'll drop the voltage below where the module will work.

I may be wrong here, but I was of the impression that the resistor in point ignitions was there to extend point life and had nothing to do with the coil.

 

[LumenAl]

Sometimes they say you need them... I have a Mallory Unilite Distributor and they do require the ballast resister to be in-line...

 

[donsrods]

Yep, I have a resistor in my circuit too and have a Unilite. Usually a hot coil means too much voltage to it.

Don

 

[Francis Blake]

is there supposed to be a resistor in the run circuiot to the coil .the old points system used a resistor to only have 9 volts to the coil in the run position. 12 V during start since the starter draw will drop available voltage to the ignition system. If they didn't have a resistor the coil would overheat. I was driving truck and had a wiring harness failure. I hot wired it with 12 volts and it finally exploded the coil before we got it back to the shop.

I did exactly the same thing and the coil melted. This was back in the day when 12 volt was new on the market and I was not aware that they had to have a resistor. when the pointless sistributor convertions came out I instaled a few of them and left the resistor in place, had no problems. Francis

 

[Wild Mango]

Yes the ballast resistor is there to limit coil current during normal running. The coil primary is lower resistance than optimal so as to give a good hot spark when cranking because the starter pulls the battery voltage down.

However the electronic module measures the energy going into the coil primary each time it charges and controls the current that way. Just like Martin says.(cheap chinese ones don't though........)

It sounds like your coil is getting ready to meet it's saints via shorted turns on the primary. Measure the primary Ohms and compare them with the spec sheet for the coil. If the coil primary resistance is too low the electronic module will suffer badly and thats what is cutting out on thermal overload, probably. IMHO, of course.