saruken
saruken Reader
7/13/20 12:08 p.m.

Symptom: Truck died in traffic; cranks fine; occasionally starts but dies again after a few seconds

Apparent cause: No spark on any cylinder (confirmed with spark light tester and holding plug against ground while cranking)

Things I have replaced: Plugs, wires, cap, rotor, ignition coil, ignition control module (inside distributor), distributor o-ring (oil had come up and fouled previous unit)

Once it still wouldn't start after distributor fixes, I started pulling apart wiring looms and trying to check grounds with a multimeter. This quickly led me to the ignition coil capacitor -- To be honest I've never heard of one of these before but mine sure looks shot:

So for you guys who have dealt with these before, or who have experience fixing no-spark issues on carbed engines, could this be causing my problem? And if not, what else should I check? Thanks!

RX Reven'
RX Reven' GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
7/13/20 1:41 p.m.

The B2000 only makes 85 hp...perhaps it's running fine but you just can't detect the power cheeky

Have you confirmed that you're grounding well? 

 

saruken
saruken Reader
7/13/20 2:46 p.m.

In reply to RX Reven' :

That's what I was doing when I came across the capacitor above. Any posts or articles you can point me to that discuss how to check that I'm grounding well -- I would definitely appreciate links. I've seen a ton of people say "check your grounds", but I haven't found much that explains how to actually do that at a component level.

RX Reven'
RX Reven' GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
7/14/20 12:25 p.m.

In reply to saruken :

Hi saruken,

Here's what appears to be a nicely written article on checking a car's grounding.

Thanks for being a good sport about the low power jab...I had a 1986 B2000 and I really liked everything about it except it could have used about a 25% power bump.

Speaking of bumping, this'll bump you back up to the top and hopefully attract some good advice.

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