Hey everyone
I have a 1954 m38a1 jeep. It has a 1970's ford 302 with 4 speed top loader. I sent it off to a shop to have some custom fab work done, it came back broken. I drove it up on their trailer, started just fine. The guy said he drove it back on the trailer the day before he brought it back. When it got here, the battery was dead. That is normal, the battery wasnt holding charge. Charged the battery, nothing. Start diagnosing, i come to find out i am not getting any spark out of the coil. I am getting 12+ volts to the coil, but absolutely no spark out. It has electronic ignition, with on off switch and push button start. I have already replaced the ignition module and the coil. I have checked every fuse, there is only 2 in the entire jeep right now, i replaced both just for fun. I have traced every wire back to its origin, even unwrapped all the wires, no cuts or brakes, everything is disconnected. I am not going to take out the coil and ignition module and have them tested to make sure they are good. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am at a loss here. Someone on a different forum said my pick up in the distributor could be bad. But that shouldnt be it because im not sending spark out the coil, i have tested it both manually and with a timing light. Any help is appreciated! Thank you.

 

Well, I'm personally not a fan of e-box conversions for a variety of reasons....IMHO, I would install a good quality set of points/condenser & rotor...making sure the rotor is of the same brand as the cap...see if that helps things out.

 

Well if you never got this resolved I would look twice at the pickup in the distributor.

I had an issues last year with is where my truck would randomly die, the wouldn't start. There was no spark from what I tested when this would happen too. I changed tons of the ignition stuff to no avail. I finally broke down and bought another distributor. It was a reman one from O'Reillys. That fixed the problem.

Recently, I was having more issues and it ended up being the distributor again... so since it had a lifetime warranty I replaced it and all is good yet again.

Based on how old your distributor is and how many miles it has, it may be worth replacing it to see if it fixes you problem.

Make sure to keep it really clean and if it doesn't work, pull it out and clean the oil off of it and see if you can return it!

 

+1 on the distributor, it's the likely candidate in this case.

 

Have you thought of switching to an hei setup? I am new to this forum so my apologies if gm derived technology is considered evil.

Ford Captain.