I was at a friends shop yesterday, and never seen this before. If you try to crank the engine, it will not run unless you have a test light touching the neg side of the coil. If its running with the test light, and you take the test light off, it will die. Its a v8 with electronic ign. Whats going on here.
You are basically adding a ground with the test light, so is the actual wire on the neg. coil post good ???
Here is the weird part. Tried two different new coils, same result. Tried to run a straight wire off the neg post to ground, would not run Tried a ballast resister, would not run. Test light, runs. Ohm meter to see what the test light was pulling, 10 ohm, get 10 ohm resister, wont run Back to test light, runs.
I wonder how the starter works, if there's no ground to the engine? There's not enough info about what it is you're working on, to try to figure out what's wrong.
Like Abomb said...you lost your ground...circuit going thru the filament of the lamp.Wire broken , distributor not making good contact to the block , block lost its grond strap/wire to frame/firewall. Missing that part of the circuit....
What brand of electronic ignition are you using? I'm betting you need to ground the electronic ignition module/box. If it was a points style ignition, I'd say replace the condenser or ground the dist. Gene
I understand what your saying about the ground, but we run a ground straight to the battery and it would not run. Take the ground wire off, hook the light back up, she busts right off.
ok,battery to positive side of coil,trigger/ignition module /points on negative side of coil?what flavour of engine/ignition system? cannot hazard a guess at anything til we know what we are dealing with.
Look at it in a positive way...with the test light hooked up......(1) Your riding...(2) you'll always have a light so you can see at night...........