74 New Yorker cranks but doesn't start.

[Joe Raymond]

My son picked up a New Yorker with 85k miles. We reworked the brakes and took the beat up AFB off and put a Street Demon (I really like it but the linkage had to be chopped a bit for clearance).

The day we ended up registering the car, he drove to his friends house and the car just died going down the road.

I went out with every ignition part I could change easily with no luck, no spark. We got a tow home and I took his coil, resistor, icm, and a spare distributor and bench tested everything. So I thought it was the distributor and even took that out and swapped it on on my bench- but zap zap zap, everything functions fine.

When I went to reinstall everything, I had another a-ha moment when I realized the last repairman put the resistor in up-side down and I put it all together correctly. I drove around town, made a couple stops with no issue and parked the car in front for the first time in a month.

Now I got no spark.

Does anybody got ideas?

Of course I polished up and greased up ground and terminal connections too.

 

[75LandYacht]

Could be! Or not! The pickup coil in the distributor. My 75 NYB would just quite while driving, and not start till it felt like it and or cooled down. Instead of dicking around with the coil I just replaced the dizzy and Walla.. it never gave me another problem.. just my 2 cents.

 

[75LandYacht]

P.S. my 75 had 86K on it when this happened. Lol

 

[Davea Lux]

Could be! Or not! The pickup coil in the distributor. My 75 NYB would just quite while driving, and not start till it felt like it and or cooled down. Instead of dicking around with the coil I just replaced the dizzy and Walla.. it never gave me another problem.. just my 2 cents.

I agree, sounds like a bad pick up coil in the distributor. The coil creates a magnetic impulse to tell the brain box to fire the coil. If it is not the pick up coil, it will be a bad brain box. You might also want to check the ballast resistor for continuity. They heat up as the car is driven and that will sometimes cause the resistor to go open as it heats up.

Dave

 

[Joe Raymond]

I'll try another distributor. Glad to know the problem could be intermittent. I've tested all the ignition parts on a bench wired up to a battery and with a multimeter.

If this doesn't work, I'm going with a Fovroler ignition (Ford coil, Chevrolet icm, Chrysler distro.) and a starter button.

 

[Davea Lux]

I'll try another distributor. Glad to know the problem could be intermittent. I've tested all the ignition parts on a bench wired up to a battery and with a multimeter.

If this doesn't work, I'm going with a Fovroler ignition (Ford coil, Chevrolet icm, Chrysler distro.) and a starter button.

Why?

Dave

 

[Joe Raymond]

Too many problems with weak spark in mopars in the past, crummy replacement parts nowadays, and getting rid of the ballast.

There's a lot of good literature out there about the HEI conversion. It gets rid of so many 45 year-old connections.

 

[Davea Lux]

Too many problems with weak spark in mopars in the past, crummy replacement parts nowadays, and getting rid of the ballast.

There's a lot of good literature out there about the HEI conversion. It gets rid of so many 45 year-old connections.

There are good off the shelf replacement units available that are not china crap. Rich Ehrenberg sells these units at www.ebay.com/str/ricksmopars.

Dave