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Hav a 77 ranchero GT my pop bought new. 190000 miles. No spark to plugs. Put new brain box,coil,st. relay, rebuilt dist then put new dist in. Nothing. Turns over like crazy. Hav fire to brain box, fire to coil, fire out of coil. No fire from dist. I'm not good with elec. Need help. I'm in west. KY.\
Not familiar with this particular setup, does it have a distributor that can be rotated 180 degrees? Had a ford older than yours many years ago that I accidentally installed backwards. It would spin forever but not fire. After rotating it fired right up.
You're getting spark out of the coil wire but not out of any of the spark plugs? It sounds like possibly a bad distributor rotor and/or maybe a distributor cap. I've had rotors look good, but be bad. Also, make sure you have the correct rotor, as with that era Duraspark, the rotor for a 6 cylinder engine will fit on the V8 distributor shaft, but will physically be too short to transfer the spark to the cap.
Put bottom plate n stator in. new brain box. new coil. new starter relay. Nothing. Put new dist in. nothing. All wires are hooked up. no burnt or melted wires
You may have fuse links at the starter solenoid. Check there to make sure none of those wires have broken or melted. That's the only other thing can think of right now. You may need to give the wires a gentle tug to verify if they're broken or not.
Last edited by johnwaz3661; May 10, 2021 at 03:28 PM.
They are o.k. 2. not melted or anything. Got power thru. Hav had 2 friends who are really good with older stuff like this an both both are stumped. Th only thing I can think of is in th steering column or a nuetral safety switch. Thanks
Update! I noticed th wires for th brain box did not match th wires on th ranchero. I checked with th NAPA man n saId what about a 77ltd with 351. He checked an sure enough th NAPA number is one number off. I ordeded th diff. box. Will be here next week. Will update then.
It fired right up. Apparently this was from Ca. so th brain box was one with Ca' emissions. Did not show this when looking for Ranchero. Did show this when looking fer 77 LTD. Thanks fer th help.
To th guy who bitched at th guy fer saying no fire an u said ya mean no spark. Go look at a million cast iron intakes. It stamped firing order!!! It does not say say sparking order! U want to help then help but don't be a smart ***.
Remember that we are all here to help each other. Regional norms may call things by a different term, and for many here, English may not be their first language. It is up to us to keep asking for clarification until the OP has solved his/her problem. I really appreciate the wisdom here and the willingness for the community to share their knowledge.
Cool that you found the problem. I'm remembering that there were a few different Duraspark Modules, typically identified by the wire grommet color and/or number of plugs (usually 2 or 3). I was under the assumption that the "blue" grommet module would get any of these era cars to at least start and run, but now we know differently.