I have new plug wires and new spark plugs on the 240. I hear ticking sounds sometimes so I just looked under the hood being dark I see every cylinder at the plug is lighting up. wires fit tight on the plugs. it looks like its coming from where the porcilun (spelling) meets the metal where the socket goes. does this make any sense? bad plugs? past experience tell me bad wires, but they seem good to me. whatever it is, im sick of this aftermarket cheap *** junk. all from my local parts store, no one else. bad water pump, fuel pump thrashing carburetors too much pressure, even the timing advance diaphragm no good. thanks

 

What make plug are you running?
This way we can stay away from them.
Dave - - - -

 

Thing is, it might not be the wires, and it might not be the plugs. Ignition is weird, it's a package deal. Are you using points & condenser? What coil? Etc. What are the spark plugs gapped to?

 

plugs are motorcraft. new points, condensor, rotor, cap, wires and plugs. gap at .35 on the plugs and .25 on the points.
coil looks old, maybe never changed, not sure, still has the tag on one of the mounting bolts. thanks

 

OK. Not gonna say this will solve your problem, just that I had a fireworks show under the hood on my slick in humid weather, engine tick, and it was a pita to figure. Just some things to look at or think about.

Are you using the ballast resistor for your point ignition? It's wired into the harness. Direct battery voltage is only used during start, when key is returned to RUN, the ballast wire is in circuit and reduces voltage and current through the coil and points.

In my case I was running a Pertronix coil with straight battery voltage, this will stress the old point style ignition components. Any weakness or defects in wiring or components will be exposed. I used "roll yer own" wires - I crimped them myself. Maybe they were defective, but I doubt it. How tough can it be?

Keep in mind the widest air gap in the secondary ignition wiring chain sets how high the voltage will rise in the coil before firing off. There are two air gaps - the spark plug gap, and - the rotor air gap inside the distributor. What I found was the rotor gap to wire terminal - inside the distributor - was excessive, way more than the plug gap.

In the smog era engineers increased this air gap. If you compare rotors from those years with earlier rotors, the brass terminal is shorter. I'm not sure if the part number actually changed. But, if you set a NOS rotor inside the distributor cap, and compare it with a new or repro rotor the difference in gap is quite a lot. This has to do with firing lean fuel mixtures and all that. Anyway, once I installed Motorcraft spark plug wires and an old school NOS close gap rotor, the problem went away. This is where an ignition analyzer helped. I could watch the firing voltage spike way high on the screen, all I had to do is figure out why. It's really important that all the juice stays bottled up and only fires at the spark plugs. Ford had a system of ignition parts that all worked together as a system, once we start swapping stuff around - caps, plugs, wires, rotors, etc 50 years later, they may not play well together, even if the parts look the same.

You are right - new parts, especially ignition parts, doesn't mean they are any good!

 

Before I forget. Trash the "new" condenser. If you're gonna run points and condenser, they need to be top quality, AND, not be defective. Condenser is a critical part. The parts store condensers from you-know-where are absolutely no good in any way. If you have a crusty old Autolite condenser, that might be worth putting back in, I dunno. They are getting on in age. They absorb moisture and won't hold a charge. To test a condenser (capacitor) it needs 500 volts DC applied to it, a DVOM can't do this. A good condenser when charged up, will shock the ***** out of you the next day if you pick it up.. Ask me how I know. LOL

 

never would have thought about that. its a 67 so no smog control. i will see if I can find the old rotor. I do have the old distributor cap though.
not sure about the ballast resistor. the coil either works or don't work, correct? those "sparks" I saw last night were more like looking at lightning from behind a cloud if that makes any sense.
not like pulling a plug to check fire. thanks for your help......….

 

No, coils can fail, and even fail intermittently. They'll work OK when cold, though not at normal operating temperature. Usually shorted turns in the miles of fine magnet wire in the secondary winding. This can be difficult to diagnose, but I doubt that would cause the problem you describe.

Can measure a coil across the + and - terminals for the primary winding ohms resistance, and across either the + or - terminal and coil terminal for secondary winding ohms resistance. Typical figures might be 1.5 ohms and 8k to 10k ohms. Many times ignition coils are replaced unnecessarily. There's a guy who runs an ignition class, the local Sears or somebody gave him a 55 gallon drum full of old coils to play with, representing years and years worth of tune-ups. They only found about a half dozen bad ones. Just some useless trivia there for ya.

Make sure the grounds are bulletproof too, fresh heavy duty cables to block, frame, and firewall with clean tight connections, and the distributor itself too - grounds to the block through the housing, paint can cause trouble.

Check carefully for evidence of carbon tracking inside the cap, and on the rotor itself too. For some reason the voltage is finding it easier to jump to ground somewhere other than at the spark plug gap. Electricity is "lazy" that way. If it can find an easier path to ground it will take it.

Yeah if you set the newer (blue) rotors inside a cap look at the gap, it was almost a quarter inch in my case. The old black ones were about the same as a plug gap. The largest air gap, either at the plug or rotor sets how high the coil voltage will rise before firing.

This is why excessive plug gap can cause misfiring or arcing too, while it does increase the firing voltage at the plug if it's excessive it will cause trouble. GM when they first issued the HEI had a .060 or .080 plug gap, something like that. It was causing rotors to burn up, so they backed off on the plug gap.

If you were running straight battery voltage to the coil, that might cause some arcing. Because I use a high output coil it was causing trouble inside the distributor cap too. The coil voltage was blasting through the rotor into the distributor shaft, and arcing at the coil termals, arcing externally between distributor wire terminals.

When they went to electronic ignition they widened the diameter of the distributor quite a bit for this reason. Ignition, high voltage is weird stuff. Once I got everything settled down it ran a lot better, new parts are not necessarily any good, especially when it comes to ignition parts. What OEM stuff we throw away is in many cases better than what we are replacing it with.

 

I found all my old stuff and put them back in. I see the rotor difference you were talking about. it runs good, need to check those things you mentioned. the old parts may not be original, but there are still differences between them and the junk I recently put on. im pretty bad about wanting to fix things that aren't broke. I did see some carbon buildup on the inside of the distributor cap. going to work on that and check grounds. many thanks

 

Good deal. Yeah I like fresh parts too, and preventive maintenance, but there's some crap parts out there too. The aftermarket parts way back when were pretty good stuff, things like Standard electrical parts were excellent quality. Starter relay solenoids are another thing to watch out for, the new ones aren't any good.

So long as there isn't any carbon tracking inside the cap it should be OK, though NOS aren't too expensive. Look on eBay for your vintage ignition parts needs. NOS points are much better quality. Polish the distributor cap plug wire receptacles shiny inside and also the brass ends of the plug wires and maybe spread them out slightly if required, ensure they fit tightly with a good, solid electrical contact into the distributor cap receptacle, also be sure they are installed all the way down and bottomed out. A little bit of silicone grease on the boots at both ends helps too. The terminal corrosion inside the cap can be scraped off carefully. Clean it all out with lighter fluid or coleman fuel and look for cracks or carbon tracking with a strong light.

 

will do on the inside of the distributor cap, I did see some carbon buildup on a couple of places.
as for the acme timing advance diaphragm, I found a new motorcraft one on ebay from a closed parts store. I bet it works and will last

like you said, those are the parts we all need to look for. thanks