no spark, hmmm...i tested this and that??? and hello again fellow '14erz

[Schump]

[disclaimer: go get a beer. this thing got encylopedic on accident. shoot, make sure your fridge is full!....naaah, it's not THAT long...]

I have officially begun resurrecting my 1973 914 2.0
i need to drive it through a vat of POR cause it used to live in CT for 15 or so if her first years. Then she moved to VA and I bought her in 1994, my 2nd car and daily driver 4 5 or so years. I rustored her, but not 100%. my 10 seconds of fame came after a couple thousand hours of work designing and building weld in panels (start w/ poster board and sharpie, transfer to sheet metal, wear out dad's dremel cutting them out after your hand aches from the tin snips, and make about 1000 trips from the garage (car on jack stands way up in the air) to the basement down the stairs (where the big vise is and will clamp the sheet metal to be bent by hand/hammer)
well, yada yada yada, i got her back to PCA driver's ed spec and in my i don't know 8th or so track day, i passed a big lady in a boxster on race tires coming out of turn 10 at Summit Point at the 1997 OG Racing Time trials. hoooo aaaah!
now, she (lindsay, my 914 who keeps looking at me while sitting in the driveway and begging to come back to life after sitting for 4 years...ugh....too much stuff to do like motorcycles, jobs, school, skiing, sailing, windsurfing, etc)
so...

yada yada yada


I can't get any spark out of my 914.
it has 100% factory ignition system. ok, so it has a blue coil, but whatever.
i've got 12V at one side of the coil. the points are opening and closing. i haven't yet pulled and fine sanded/checked out the points as i know they die easily and want to be replaced by the petronix setup to eliminate the need for replacement, but i'll get some more points in a couple days... have to finish cleaning out the garage so dad can put the maxima back in it...tomorrow morning....
anyone have any suggestions as to where to go from here? did my condesor take a dump? i don't think so according to my haynes manual but i dunno
anyone have any resistance spec's for the coil so i can check it w/ my multimeter?
or should i just weld a fork to the rear trunk, take all my good parts off it, get a rust free chassis from arizona and put a small block in it?
i have a decent amount of good parts in my car, it was definitely a labor of love/hate, but mostly love....
thanks for the help.
sorry to ramble, just haven't been on a 914 BBS since ol' tim's sight waaaay back in the day....THAT's where I saw Dave Darling's name originally...i think...
later,
Dave "the Moose" Schumpert
The Moose is Loose!!!....I got my "get out of jail FREE" card last friday, aka drove any kind of motorized vehicle for the first time since my femur breaking. luckily the rents have a 2001 maxima...automatic....can't clutch yet...
(my parents' house has been jail since sept 1st or so...2715 miles east of the mountain I love, but closer to the school i need to sneak my way back into to finish up my Mech Engr degree...1 more semester of hard work and it'lll be over if Virginia Tech will let me back in....i'll ask again tomorrow....academic suspension blows, but then again, 620" of snow and skiing on july 4th didn't blow at all, along w/ 110 or so days on the snow and the number of smiles i put on kids faces last winter teaching them...

[Dave at Pelican Parts]

Try this: Hook up a plug wire and a plug to the center terminal of the coil. Tape the plug so that the threaded part (or the outer electrode) is touching the fan shroud or another ground. Make sure you can see the gap, though. Hook up a wire to ground, and leave the other end bare.

Turn on the ignition so you get +12V to the coil. Take the ground wire, and touch it to the (-) terminal of the coil. Then pull it away. During one of those transitions, you should see a spark. If you don't, then either you've set up this test incorrectly, or the coil is dead.

Doing this eliminates the distributor completely--you're pretty much just testing the coil and the power supply to the coil at this point.

You can also, with a multimeter, check that the green wire at the points gets grounded when the points close. Make sure the ground braid inside the distributor is in good shape, for instance...

--DD

[Joe Ricard]

wow that's cool Dave. I woulda never gone to that extreme. I just throw another coil in there and try that.

Make sure there is NO GAS vapors in the engine compartment during this test.

[Schump]

yeah, vapors....smaperz!
i'm gonna git my kan uv gumooooot karb kleenur that i've been uzin to fix dad's ol' mcgull-ugh! chainsaw so i can power my wheelchair and he can have a gas saw again an' be4 i git to my ZX7 karbs, kleen out the intake of the ol' 914.
once I do that, i'll go inside, grab a Bush Light frum my fridge (under my home, next to my garage, sittin' on it's side so my wheels could be taken off the house fur the dirt trak kar,....of course!)
actually, the house sits on thu fridge so it's like doid dubble duty.
so i'll git my carbs all cleaned out in the 914 and then i'll light a red and see if i have any spark!
uh, why do my carbs have wires all ovur thu place and them 4 thingeez that have 4 wires just in frunt uv thu ports?

(can u tell I lived in the woods 10 miles outside of town at Virginia Tech for two separate semesters???)...gotta luv
livin in the country! gyu gyu gyu! )....i'm about to head outisde w/ jumper cables, the maxima (it still has a good battery) and a wire and plug and see if the blue is a go or a no go, then look at her non-bosch trash auto points...
thanks Dave.

[jamcleod]

WOW, another teener in northern VA. let us know (i will be p'ming you for info) how you're doing and we can all gather to kibutz!

[M. Hendrix]

Originally posted by Joe Ricard

Make sure there is NO GAS vapors in the engine compartment during this test.

Just when things get the possibilty of excitement, someone comes along with a way to end it.



heh


M

[Schump]

2 end the excitement...
i've "checked thu coil
i got a nooo blooo 1 from charlie at intersport
and i'll make $200 per day retrievinga 1961 chirs craft from detroit via madison (where it will come from) next weekend...)
so come next afternoon, i should have a running 914, i hope
i'lll let u know uv thu progress, but as soon as i was headed home from charlies shop, free blue coil in hand, i got called aboooot the NIN/other bands show at hte MCI center in dc, so you know.....
back 2morrow....
sleep now...finally!

[M. Hendrix]

You got called aboot the NIN show in DC? To go see it?

If Downward Spiral fit, that'd be my license plate.


M