Been hunting down a power loss problem with my 88 F150 efi
and traced the problem back to the coil
And..
Realized that there is an old Anti theft device called a "Z-Lock" attached to my coil with some sort of ballaster of some sort..
This device was around during the 1970"s-1980's and it was a combination of a hood locking device, and an electrical power killer- When I bought the truck I was never given a key to the lock mounted beneath the dash- one of those round barrel key-locks, you need the key to lock- and unlock the device- so it was allways disengaged, and never used- However, its still wired in, and the cable to the hood lock is still there..

ANYONE ever come across one of these contraptions?-and know how to disconnect them from the coil??- I went searching for it on the web, and it turns out the company disapeared,died off..etc.etc

 

I would bet it just interrupts power to the coil(or just grounds it out with ballast resistor). Check where the original wire might be cut/modified and just eliminate the device. Make sure to solder the wire(if it was cut) as you don't want it to come back to haunt you later due to a corroded butt connector!

 

Yes, I am going to carefully un-wire this thing, and correctly remove it like it was a bomb.

Maybe you could clarify something here...

I just had a conversation with a buddy of mine, as far as where the power to the coil is coming from- He seemed to believe that with the EFI models the pick-up inside the distributor was the source to the coil-
I have always believed it was from the Ignition..?
The pick-up within the Distributor doesnt supply power to the coil does it??
would you Have an opinion on this?

 

The distributor has a pickup in it, it tells the ignition box when to fire the coil. This is how all electronic ignitions work. Only back in the day of points did the distributor supply the gound for the coil to fire(The hot side came from ignition key).

 

Right, Ok, -I was thinking that the old points design set the standard regardless, -guess i was wrong with the electronic ignitions- never had to really mess with them until now-
which actually opens the door to a possible additional problem outside of a bad coil- it could be that pick-up inside the Distributor....narrowing it down.
-Thanks for the help !