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It keeps dying

B

Bill

Guest
I have a 1986 350 Corvette. It dies and an hour later it will start. Not this time. I had it towed home and the next morning it still didn't start. I jumped a wire with a light to see if it was getting fire from the spark plug wire to the plug. No fire. It seems to do this after it is warmed up.At least six miles out of town.When I put the wire on the dist post to the light it got fire and started. Wow. I had the ingnation mod. checked and it was fine. Could it be the chip in the key? Does anyone know how to jump around that? Any suggestions would help.
 
SO let me see

It cranks... but doesn't fire, no spark correct?


BUT

When you put a test light on the RED post of the distributor
( other side of test light grounded )

It cranks & fires?

Is this correct?



Vig!
 
hehe

Hey,, i don't have experianc ein this happening to me, but
I was told,, that a bad coil will soem times stop working when it warms up,,

and it will die u out, but it will work until it warms up,,,
that might be your problem
something for u to seriously look into
 
sorry i dind't read the rest of your stuff u wrote

if its not the coil,,, and,,, u do come ot the point in jumpinng aorund something,,,

what u do is,, go call a lock smith,, and he will charge u liek 40 bucks to put in a new igition switch,, u have to hav ea lock smith do it, cause if u take of fyour steering wheel,, its a pain to get back on, u have to do like 6 things at once,, very very hard, corvettes have the hardest steering wheels to put on,, its a theif resistant thing
 
Bill

The 86 was ( I think the FIRST ) year of VATS.

The orig key chip was ...different ( less contact area)

So how's the battle going?

Vig!
 
Keeps Dying

I had the coil checked and the ign.mod. Both are fine, all wires are ok.(no breaks or shorts)
I guess I will drive it until it acts up again. The people at Mid America Corvette said it might be a fluke, who knows. Thanks for the ideas. If anyone has any more suggestions feel free to respond.
Thanks
Bill
 
Ohhhhhhhhh

This happened in my 84 & in a friend's El Camino.

WEIRD INTERMITTANT


The coil would keep crappin out......

Let it cool for a bit and Vroom... hit a bump, Cough sputter.

We removed the cap and the coil cover and found 2 things.

1) An excessive amount of rust where the coil grounded to the metal laminitaions on the coil frame in 2 places... the coil wire
( ground ) went to one side of the frame and the actual ground tang was on the other... When removing the coil we noticed that the plastic did not give a good BITE for the hold down screw ( since your going into the plastic of the cap).. and it was almost stripped. ( new cap fixed this )

2) Under the insulation of one of the wires we noticed a kink.... there was ALL SORTS OF ALIEN CORROSION under the insulation where the wire had bent and the laquer on the actual coil wire had flaked off.. leaving it exposed to the elements. The remaining connection ( after cleaning ) was about 1/2 of the normal O/D of the wire. We cut it back and crimped & soldered a new pigtail on it.

There were no more problems ( of that nature).

And an editorial comment

The CAPS for the C-4's are CR@P, very thin plastic.. and there are no HI-PO caps available... or sure the say Hi-PO on the box but none of em are any different in construction short of a color change.

You cannot get ( at least out here ) the Blue Streak style cap (in the thicker BLUE plastic)

Except for the rotor... go figure.

( Ok done venting )



Vig!
 

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