Ignition wire mystery question

[drewr]

Can any ignition guru explain to me why this occurred to my 1977 targa with a 1980 SC engine?

I replaced my distributor cap, rotor and plug wires after snapping one of the plastic plug attachments. After finishing, it cranked right up.

I left it idling while I finished the project. I stupidly tried to replace the left metal heat duct while the engine was still running. The metal touched the plug wires, it arced and the engine died. I tried to restart and no luck. No fire.

Cursing myself, I just reattached all the heating ducts trying to calm myself down. Took maybe 3 minutes.

I then sat back in the car and hit the ignition. It fired right up! Runs great.

What did I do? Why did it die? Why didn’t it immediately restart? Why did it work a few minutes later?

Honestly, Porsche ignition is voodoo to me.

Any lesson would be appreciated.

[gomezoneill]

Wow!

[fred cook]

Sounds like you may have caused a ground to open when you removed the sheetmetal. Check to make sure you have a good ground between the engine block and the frame. Add one if needed!

[timmy2]

Ground from CDI 6 pin to coil negative relies on the brown wire to ground on the coil mounting base.
If you take off the coil mount and wire, you kill the ground circuit for the coil. This will kill the ignition.

This ground circuit was more obvious on early years where they ran a wire from coil negative to the coil mount base, in the 6 pin CDI’s they join the coil neg and coil base ground wires in the terminal at the 6 pin connector.

[drewr]

The coil and grounds were all correctly connected. I think I just shorted the wires by touching the plug wires with the metal heat duct.

I'm assuming I discharged the capacitor? It took a moment to recharge before the car would run correctly? Does that sound like a correct assessment?

[gomezoneill]

Originally Posted by drewr

The coil and grounds were all correctly connected. I think I just shorted the wires by touching the plug wires with the metal heat duct.

I'm assuming I discharged the capacitor? It took a moment to recharge before the car would run correctly? Does that sound like a correct assessment?

Was it the FLUX capacitor?

[drewr]

Yeah, I just got back from 1977.

[stlrj]

All SC's and early 911's, for that matter, have hidden poltergeists that make their presents known at anytime, which is why modern cars come with on board diagnostics that weed them out so we can sleep at night.