car wont start

[luckythirteen13]

tried to go to my g/f house today and the car wouldnt start. pulled the wire off the cap that comes from the coil and stuck a spark plug in it. my dad cranked it and there was a nice big spark so i know my coil is working. i then pulled the cap off the dizzy to see if the rotor was spinning. it spun just fine. i then put it back together and cranked it and it fire up. i got out of my car to close the hood and it died and it wont start back up. for the couple of seconds it was idling it was idling perfect. i pulled the #5 cylinder (no reason i picked it, just easy to get at) and smelled it.....it smelled like fuel so i know the injectors are spraying. stuck that plug in the wire and layed it on the manifold. i had my dad crank it and no spark at all. i checked the spout connector and it was securely attached. this leads me to believe that the little grey box on my dizzy is bad. is that the TFI?i know they are prone to heat damage and it was 110* out today at around 4pm....not sure how hot it was during the heat of the day

also, maybe related, the other day coming home i was in my neighborhood doing about 30mph when all of a sudden my car felt like the spark went out for just a brief second and then came right back. i drove home and didnt think much of it. but now with this new problem im wondering if they are related.

how much is one of those ignition things? anyone have any other ideas what it might be?

 

[90mustangGT]

It might as well be the pickup inside the distributer. Mine did that once, it would spark sometimes, but not all the time, cut out sometimes, but then went right back togeather. The pickup was broken, but when it finally gave out, it had completly broken. If it's original, I would get a new pickup and TFI. They don't cost much at all. Or you could get one of those pretty MSD units!

 

[HISSIN50]

Is there any chance that you didnt have a solid ground for the spark plug when you pulled it to check for spark? It's easy to not have it grounded decently; the test becomes invalid if this is the case.

At the end of its pathway, the TFI supplies the coil with the signal to create spark. It's critical temp is about 257*F.

Jrichker's list can help you narrow things down. Given the intermittant-ness of this, I wont say more, as it would be more like guessing than something with meat behind it.

If you get a no-spark situation again, look for injector pulsing AT THAT TIME (who knows when your plugs got wet - you cant infer much from that about real-time injector performance). If spark and injector pulsing are AWOL, check the PIP that Jason mentioned. If just spark, further testing like you did can narrow down the ignition loss.

Also, if it feels like it cuts on and off real quick, dont overlook the ignition switch.

Good luck.

 

[luckythirteen13]

fixed it!!

talked to my friend last night and he said it sounds like the tfi is still good but having trouble conducting a current. he told me to get some electrical grease and put it on the back off the tfi box and on all the connectors so i did that today. i didnt have the right size socket so i bought one. the tool and the grease came to $4.50 and the car runs great. i had to scrape the old grease off with puddy knife because it was dry and hard.


are those msd ones worth it? any different then the ford one?

 

[eagleautosports]

If you're talking about the distributor, they're better because they don't move at all in there so they're more stable and give a consistent spark. But they're a major pain to put in because the clearances are a lot tighter. But until you actually need a new distributor, wait on it.