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By sofob0909 - 15 Years Ago
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hey guys. Here is my situation. I am trying to get my 56 f100 project going a bit. I want to get the motor firing. Here is what i have so far. I can get the motor to turn over with the battery and i have the positive terminal of the battery also hooked to the +side of the coil. the negative side is hooked to the wire that comes out the bottom of te distributor. I dont seem to have any spark still. I need some trouble shoot help. I have compression and fuel is pumping. I need a diagram/direction on how to hook things up and how to check parts. The cap and points look relatively new. I pulled a plug and used a screwdriver to test spark to the end of the plug and nothing. I also checked the continuity of the wire to that plug and the center wire to the coil. HELP PLEASE
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By davis - 15 Years Ago
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hey man,
check these pages.
go thru schematics.
http://www.tocmp.com/manuals/Ford/1958/Service/08/Group8/index.html
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By sofob0909 - 15 Years Ago
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this doesnt really help. Im looking for how to test the distributor and coil. Im thinking they are good. The starter does work and i dont have the generator hooked up
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By Ol'ford nut - 15 Years Ago
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Start off my checking that rotor is turning when you turn engine over. Then check gap on points and make sure they are clean. SHOULD START How does coil wire look?
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By sofob0909 - 15 Years Ago
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how do i check the gaps of the points? The rotor does turn when i crank the engine over by hand so the distributor shaft is not broken.
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By sofob0909 - 15 Years Ago
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oh ya the wire to the bottom of the coil looks solid.I will check it for continuity if that would help. The coil is a botch coil that came from a late 90's volvo 240
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By YellowWing - 15 Years Ago
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To test the coil disconnect the distributor primary lead from the negative side. Remove the coil high tension lead from the distributor and place loose end of it 1/4" from a bare metal surface ( coil mounting bracket). Turn key on and check for 6 to 8 volts at positive side of coil, or hook a lead from the battery positive to the coil positive terminal. With a short piece of wire that is grounded on one end touch the other end to the negative side of the coil for a moment then remove. coil should create a spark across the 1/4" gap each time the negative wire is removed, if not coil is bad. To check distributor remove primary wire from the negative side of coil and connect it to a test light or to a 12 volt bulb and socket assembly. hook the other end of the test light/bulb assembly to the positive side of the battery. crank the engine, the bulb should flash on/off or bright/dim rapidly. If it stays bright you have a short. If off you have an open circuit, corroded points/broken wire. This assumes a 12 volt system. Otherwise substitute 6V where 12V indicated. Hope this helps, Mike
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By sofob0909 - 15 Years Ago
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ok so here is what i did. I took jumper cables and an old wrench. The wrench became chassis. I hooked up jumpers to the battery. positive jumper went to positive side of coil. negative went to wrench. I then took the center coil wire that would have gone to the center of the distributor cap and fixed it so the exposed end was about a 1/4 inch from the wrench. Then i used a "jumper wire" to jump from wrench to negative side of coil. All that happened was i got sparks at the "jumper wire" when ever i touched it to the negative terminal of the coil. Did i hook this up correctly? and if so does this mean i have a bad coil. thanks so much. If i can get this running i will post a video of the beast running for the first time since i got it
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By YellowWing - 15 Years Ago
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Stephen, you need to mount the coil to a bare metal spot on the engine and hold the coil secondary wire close to the block. The problem with the way you are doing it is, the wrench is isolated from the coil. It is the same as if the coil wire were just sticking out of the coil and not near anything. Check again with coil mounted and if you get the same result you have a bad coil. Mike
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By sofob0909 - 15 Years Ago
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hey there. Thanks for the help again. I did another "redneck" test. I wrapped aluminum foil around the coil and layed it on the wrench. IT WORKED!!! i got spark. now im testing the distributor. I hooked up a 12v light in series with the wire coming out of the distributor bottom.(wire to light then light to + battery terminal. Then i grounded the frame. I spun the engine over by hand and i didnt get any lighting up. Im going to check the gap. (.014-.016) This is what my shop manual says for a 56 f100. Should i check anything else? Thanks again. STEVE
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By Daniel Jessup - 15 Years Ago
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Points and condensers go out quite often, even when they "look" good. If you are wiring correctly, and if your wires are not frayed or broken, I would highly suggest getting another set of points and condenser. While you are at it, pick up a couple. For price considerations, if you check with Advance or Autozone, you could probably get a new distributor, complete with new points and condensor for a little less than $40. Just letting you know this when you start looking at getting points and condensor sets. Some places have them priced way too high. Let us know how it works out.
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By sofob0909 - 15 Years Ago
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Hey guys. Here is the video. I got her running. I am the one working the throttle and my dad is working the battery. Ill take another of more details later but i figure this might brighten up your days. Thanks again to Yellowwing and Ol'Ford nut. Enjoy. I will continue to add videos as the project goes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4YinxYzPuQ
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By Daniel Jessup - 15 Years Ago
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Stephen, Great stuff! Keep it up...nothing like the satisfaction of hearing that vintage V8 fire off and rumble.  Stick with it. There are quite a few fellas on this site that can give you quite a bit of help. If you haven't subscribed to the Y Block Magazine, by all means, do that soon. Check the link section here on this site. Bruce Young, the editor, is a great guy, knows Y blocks, and puts out a great magazine. Keep posting those videos...Tim McMaster has some good ones on YouTube as well if you haven't seen those yet.
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