As part of a routine, I went to start up the Monte Carlo, since it hasn't been run in probably a month, give or take. There's other reasons behind this, I wanted to try and start taking steps to get this car back on the road since we're coming into a timeframe where I can drive without the worry of needing heat or AC, as this car has neither. So, when I tried to crank the thing over, I got nothing but cranking. Even with the charger in place, with plenty of juice, I got nothing. Had plenty of fuel, nothing. I threw the timing light on the thing to see if I was getting spark and again nothing. So, now it's troubleshooting time, in the ignition system, specifically at the distributor. The first thing I wanted to check was the coil to verify it was good.
To check an HEI coil, I had to ohm out the primary coil and secondary with a multimeter, checking on the Battery and ground terminals for the primary and the carbon button to ground for secondary. Ohm readings should be around 0.1-1 ohm for primary and 6k-30k on secondary. The coil checked out, so the next move was to replace the ignition module, as the cap and rotor were still in decent condition. With me looking at changing the module, I figured I might as well change the cap and rotor, for shits and giggles. I had a spare HEI distributor, aftermarket of course, that I pulled these parts from, just to test out whether any of these components are bad. The aftermarket cap had an issue fitting on the stock GM distributor body but I was able to get it down, after installing the new ignition module of course. An attempt to start the car was met with failure. Apparently, this aftermarket cap was made where the tolerances were different from that of the stock hardware. It was a smidge narrower than the stock cap, so I had to go back to the stock cap, even though I did use the new rotor. An attempt to crank was met with a couple sputters and hesitations, but still no full start. I had to start looking around. While reinstalling the timing light to check if I have spark, I noticed a power wire on the positive terminal was loose. I tightened it up. The next attempt to crank was met with a brief crank then nothing. Checking the ground cable, I found it was loose. Trying to twist it some to get a good grab on the battery post ended up with me breaking the clamp end off of the post end. Well there it is, maybe this battery terminal was the whole problem, enough to crank the starter but dropped the voltage to the distributor too low due to the bad terminal. Either way, I replaced the terminal and cranked the engine again and I guess it had to clear the flooded carb enough before it finally cranked back up. Success! Now with the Monte back up and running, I can move on to some other mop up work on the car. A check on the front suspension earlier found the wheel bearing was just loose. I do still need to replace the front tires as they're worn. I need to clean the interior and try to remove the moisture from the carpet. I may go ahead and replace the radio too, since it used to give me grief in the past. Other than that, the car should be ready to rock and roll.
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