There is probably a couple of forums this would fit in but I'll try my luck in here first. I am just wondering if any one is familiar or has had any experience with the Accel 300+ universal ignition system. Specifically replacing the duraspark 2 ignition with it on a late 70's vehicle. This set up does have the Accel distributor for this system as well. Whats happening is we are getting power to the control unit as it should be. But we only get power to the coil when the engine is being cranked. Is this how it is supposed to be? We are not getting any power off of the coil what so ever with with just the ignition on. And I mean the wires going to the coil, not the coil wire itself. Just had to make that clear. I have noticed when cranking the engine while using a tester, the power seems to be intermittent. I am not an expert so I have no idea if this is normal. We have tried different coils, wires, nothing. I have gone over my wiring and everything still seems to check out ok. I have tried the torubleshooting techniques and when we get to testing the coil it fails. For some reason we are just not getting power correctly to the coil. Or not enough. Since its my brothers car I told him to call Accel and see if they might know what is going on cause we are getting stumped. The car in question is 79 T-bird with a 351C. Its not a truck, but at least its a ford.

 

Do the instructions say anything about a coil resistor? Are you supposed to leave it in or bypass it? Anyway, the resistor or the ignition switch, sounds like your problem.

There are two sources feeding the coil +. One comes from the ignition switch, through a special resistance wire, and then to the coil. The other one comes from the starting circuit. The starting circuit sends a full 12 volts to the coil to for a hotter spark for starting. When you release the key, then the coil is fed from the resistance wire.

You need to read the instructions to see what they say about the resistor. If they say don't use it, then you will have to run a new 12 volt wire from either the ignition switch or the fuse box, to feed the coil. If they say use one, then you need to pull the ignition switch out, and figure out why you don't have 12 volts going from the switch, through the resistor wire, to the coil.

I just thought of something. If they say do not use a resistor, instead of running a new wire to the fuse box, you could use one of the wires that used to go to the duraspark II ford module. On the module you should have a plug that had two wires side by side. One red, the other white on the module. Figure out which wire in the harness went to the red wire on the module, and you can use this wire to feed the coil, IF you are not supposed to use a resistor.

 

[QUOTE=

I just thought of something. If they say do not use a resistor, instead of running a new wire to the fuse box, you could use one of the wires that used to go to the duraspark II ford module. On the module you should have a plug that had two wires side by side. One red, the other white on the module. Figure out which wire in the harness went to the red wire on the module, and you can use this wire to feed the coil, IF you are not supposed to use a resistor.[/QUOTE]


This is exactly how I wired the ignition. I used the existing wires for the duraspark, and soldered an old plug to the ignition. That way its still easy to plug the duraspark module back in. We might try that anyways. The instructions say nothing about a resistor wire. Its a pretty basic set up. I just can't figure out the problem. There is a black wire that is coming out of the ignition that the instructions do not identify. I assume this is a ground, but I am very skeptical. Thanks for your reply. I'll try and keep tabs on what I find. My brother is thinking about just swtching to a crane fireball anyhow. He doesn't care much for the accel distributor anyways. It has the old style cap with the plugs close together. Under high RPM's the 5 and 6 wires tend to arc on the cleveland becuase of the firing order.