ok so the otherday my truck would not start and my ignition coil was not getting any power. so i traced my wire back and my resister was broken. so i replaced it but when i turn my key on and it gets power it starts to smoke. some one told me that it was because it was grounding some were. is this true? or is there a nother reason this could be doing it.:confus ed::confus ed:

 

Yes it is grounding somewhere... if you have points it should be grounded on one end of the circuit if the points are closed and the key is on........ if you have no points but say a duraspark electronic ignition I would not expect to see any smoke with the key selected to "on" only when the engine is running............ the smoke may be just the result of the "leftovers" from the manufacture of the resistor burning off...... resistors lower circuit voltage by producing heat... so it can be normal to have it smoke for a while till all the manufacturing grease/oil/dirt/paint burns off.
My 2 cents.

 

You are drawing current from somewhere, stuck contacts in the old style voltage regulators and/or a bad condensor in the distributor are good places to look.

 

ok i thought that it may be some kinda cleaner or oil burning off but i wasnt for sure. oh and the truck wont run it turns over just fine but wont start. and when the key is off the posidive side of the ignition coil is grounded. is this normall?

 

I had the same problem when I first got my 51F1 running, I had thrown parts I had lying around together. I finally went to Shucks and purchased a Coil and a Resistor for a 226 Dodge Slant Six.
On thing I did do, was when I installed the EZWire harness I set the Ignition to bypass the Resistor in the start position with 12V to the Distributor like the early GM (SBC) engines were setup. This was also the way the EZwire wiring instructions tell you to hook up the Ignition. After I went through 3 Condensers and was sitting on the side of the road on my running board a light came on. I pulled that bypass wire off, run one single wire to the Resistor from both the start, and run, terminals on the ignition switch. I have had no problems sense, and have been running the same point set I installed that day 6 years ago. Up until last week when I decided it was probably time to change them out.
One other thing to check is the Primary Lead where it hooks in the Distrubutor there is a little piece of plastic (washer) to keep it from grounding out. Mine was grounded there it took a few minutes of head scratching to find it...

 

Do you have points? They may be stuck closed..... as said condensor may be bad....that is if you have points...
Assuming you have a point system......since the truck will not fire I would check the ignition circuit..... steady 12v to coil positive with the key on and 0v with the key off, and the coil negative goes thru the points to ground..... so when the points are closed you should have ground at the coil negative post and when they are open no ground there..... the condensor can short internally and give a ground all the time at the coil negative.. this will not allow the coil to produce voltage to the plugs... thru the wonders of electricity, coils, smoke and mirrors if you have a pulsating ground on the coil negative side, caused by points opening and closing, and a steady 12v supply to the coil positive, the centre tap or high voltage coil lead to the dizzy cap gets voltage to be sent to the sparkplugs....
You could try removing the coil negative wire, and hook a meter between it and ground, then manually open and close the points, if the points, condensor and wiring are good you should see the ground come and go on the meter.....

 

were do the points ground to. i cant get a ground with them open or closed

 

One side of the points is grounded to the distributor case.... the other side has a wire attached to it that goes out of the distributor to the coil negative post... this wire has been known to break, especially where it exits the distributor..... try measuring from the coil negative wire, disconnect the wire first, to one side of the points and see if you get continuity, as in less than 1 ohm....... if that is good the wire is good..... also make sure the points are clean and not pitted as this can block the ground path...

 

i dont see any broken wires. ok there is a wire going from the distributer case to the base of the points ill call this wire A. i am guessin this is were it grounds at. the other wire (wire B) comes from the side of the of the points (were the wire from the condensor attaches to the points) and goes around threw the distributer case to the negative side of the coil. now i took a test light and touched it to wire A and it did not light up so i was thinking (and im probably wrong about all this.) that the connection was bad between the distributer case and the wire. but i also touched the test light to the distributer case and it was not lighting up. the distributer case should be grounded? right? if the distributer case should be grounded ,like i think, and its not than that would be why im not getting a ground at my points. so i figured i would be able to run a wire from were wire A attaches to the distributer case to like the body or frame to ground it. will this work or am i compleately wrong.

 

Assuming your test light has 12v(+) going to the other side of it AND the points are open, Yes, the light should come on when you touch the probe to the case of the distributor, or the points base plate (stationary part) or any other ground. If you're not getting a light in those circumstances, disconnect the "B" wire at the coil, and connect one end of the test light to that terminal and the other to a good ground with the Ignition ON. If it doesn't come on, your resistor may have smoked off. Try bypassing it.

In rare (but not too rare) of cases, the stationary point can corrode at its junction with the base plate, and even tho everything looks right, it won't conduct electricity.

 

so what does that mean if the distributer case is not grounded. can i rig something up to ground the distributer case?

 

The Surgeon General has decided that resistor smoking is bad for your health. Besides that they smell bad and they're hard to light.

Seriously, it could be grounded points or a partially shorted primary coil winding. Also the condensor could be shorted or you could have the wrong resistor. there are different ones.

Later Man...

 

Have a read of this link.......

http://home.mindspring.com/~purlawso...sIgnitions.pdf

We can go back and forth all day with these posts ..... but in the end it is very hard to fault-find over the internet.
Hopefully the link helps you understand how the points systems work and how to troubleshoot them..... good luck and let us know if you get it running or if we can confuse you some more with suggestions

 

What engine is this we're talking about??

 

Assuming nothing is wired wrong or defective, a new resistor will smoke for a few seconds, then everything will be fine. Just burning off that Chinese crap I guess....Rod