Yet another non starting Land Rover

[mkchard]

I've got a 67 Series 2a 109 station wagon, that started up one day and then just quit and I have not been able to start it up again. It cranks over like normal but there is no spark. I replaced the coil and the Wire from the coil to the distro with the one off of my 88 and I could still not get a spark out of the coil. So what do I test for now? Ignition switch? I register 12 volts when I turn on the ignition at the postive terminal of the coil. but it drops when I start cranking. Any tips on how I should proceed, other than just start replacing everything?

[scott]

replace the condensor. it's cheap. check the ground wire that is on the disributor deck

[rovertek]

if you put a test lite on the pos side and you have juice, then check the neg side of coil, when you crank engine it should blink indicating the points are working properly if it does not i would remove the points and file or with sandpaper clean the contact surface and clean the oily residue that accumulates under where the points mount to the dist and reset them to .015 and recheck the neg side it should now be blinking

[badvibes]

my gremlins were electrical...

I've got a 67 Series 2a 109 station wagon, that started up one day and then just quit and I have not been able to start it up again. It cranks over like normal but there is no spark. I replaced the coil and the Wire from the coil to the distro with the one off of my 88 and I could still not get a spark out of the coil. So what do I test for now? Ignition switch? I register 12 volts when I turn on the ignition at the postive terminal of the coil. but it drops when I start cranking. Any tips on how I should proceed, other than just start replacing everything?

Had a similar situation. Truck would crank but not fire up and run. Did everything, new points, rotor, cap, condenser, coil, wires. Nothing worked. A couple of guys that "diagnosed" my truck long distance both said it was a ground problem in the distributor. I was to the point of thinking I'd just buy a new dizzy next and see if that fixed things so I thought well if I'm gonna buy a dizzy anyway I just as well tear into this one and see what I can see. After all if I ruin it I'm going to buy a new one anyway right? So I tear down my distributor as far as I can and come to learn that the distributor "deck" is grounded to the dist body by a small wire. A very small gauge wire. Upon closer examination the wire feels very pliable, almost like there's nothing inside the insulation. So I pull the wire and strip it and there are like 3 or 4 extremely thin strands of wire left inside the insulation. I'm talking almost hair thin wires. So I fab a new ground wire, 14 gauge is all if memory serves, which is significantly heavier than what I pulled off. Hook it up, put everything back together and what do you know the truck fired right up. That little ground wire inside the dizzy was unable to complete a ground from the distributor internals to the distributor body. So if I'm thinking of this correctly it was like the points were never opening so that the condenser was never exciting the coil to send the spark back to the dizzy to create that wonderful thing known as internal combustion. Here's a link that makes it so even I sort of understand:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/ignition-system4.htm

Sorry to be so long winded, hope this helps/gets you running.

Jeff