Electronic ignition and start

G

Gabalus

Senior Member
Hello,

My model A start well with an original distributor.
Unfortunatly, when I put a Nu-Rex on it, the starter turn the engine but it don't start.
My only solution is to go down the hill in second gear.
Then it run really well and smoothly.
Poor battery ?
Thank you for your ideas.
 
Maybe a poor ground on the new distributor. The starter takes all of the battery power and with a poor ground there is not a good circuit to ground for distributor. Remove some paint from the bottom of the distributor where it makes contact with the head. This is just a guess.
 
I put a Pertronics unit in my distributor and all was fine for 4 years 'til last week. The motor turned over fine but would not start. The starter was singing and singing but not starting. I thought that maybe the starter was drawing too much from the battery and not enough left for the spark so I put the charger on the battery and the next day it started right up. Hope that this may give you a clue.
 
Gabalus,as sturgis 39 said.Make sure your grounds are excellent.I called Nu-Rex when I installed mine and they said to make sure you have good ground as the biggest failure is a bad ground.Mine has been in 6 years now and starts 2nd spin every time.


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I had a whol bunch of peroblems due to an electronic ignition installed by a previous owner of my car. Why anyone would want to go away from the simplicity of a points ststem is beyond me. I say put the stock parts back in it!
 
harleyjj said:
I had a whol bunch of peroblems due to an electronic ignition installed by a previous owner of my car. Why anyone would want to go away from the simplicity of a points ststem is beyond me. I say put the stock parts back in it!
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I'm not sure which unit you had in yours. But back in late 80's early 90's when people started putting the electronics in that had the what I think was Chrystler ignition modified for an A, those were problematic and could leave you on the side of the road. The new ones made my fs, and what use to be nurex, are really nice systems. they're really simple to instal, and as long as you wire them exactly how its told to you in the instructions (only 4 wires I believe) they're almost indestructible. Bad grounds, and not wiring them per the instructions is when they start failing. I've got about 15,000 miles on mine, and my brother probably has about 13,000 on his and we have never had any problems.
 
Thank you very much for your interest and quick answer !
I put the charger on the battery. I'm waiting...
I'll verify ground tomorrow and try a new run.
I put this electronic ignition on my car to have a little bit more power at low range. All around us : hill and mountains...
Thank you !
 
Sturgis and Ross nailed it! If you are running a Pertronix 6 volt module, it needs 4.7 volts to fire. Given unknown conditions of the battery, starter, cables, charging system, and grounds on an old car it, is quite possible that the starter is drawing so much current that there is not 4.7 volts left to fire the ignition.

I went though this same phenomenom earlier this spring, it got to the point that I would try to park facing downhill to be able to bump start if necessary. In my case this was a symptom of my old 6 volt battery not being "up to snuff".

The 12 volt pertronix requires a minimum of 7.x volts to fire, (just sayin)
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Put the original dist back in. Then sell that stuff to some one else. You do not need any thing but points for a low compression A.
 
George Miller said:
Put the original dist back in. Then sell that stuff to some one else. You do not need any thing but points for a low compression A.
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I kind of agree with you but I would like to see him make the new system work. It is probably a bad ground between the distributor and the engine block and maybe the engine and frame. The starter may need to be rebuilt or tuned up because it may drawing too many amps. The car runs great when he starts it by coasting down the hill.

I had a model "T" that acted the same way. My friend would hand crank the "T" and it would start. When using the starter it would not start. The stater was taking all of the amps and the ignition had a weak ground. I replaced the starter with another starter and cleaned up the grounds and it started.

I would also test the battery or have it tested at a battery shop.
 
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