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[Marks DTM Calib]

This may not be the problem but it's worth knowing about if all else fails.

Fords of that vintage sometimes had ballast resitors fitted into the wiring between the ignition switch and the coil which when they became faulty gave the indication that the coil had failed.

The classic symptom was that the engine would just stall for no reason and would re-start after letting it sit a while, which required longer at each stall until the car would not start again. In the worst case it just failed and as the suspect was the coil you went and bought a new one only to find there was no change.

The usual resistor looks like a length of thicker wire in the line between the switch and the coil and may be under loom tape just to make it more difficult but is just a case of splicing it back in, if I remember right Ford were supplying them with bullet connectors as they were so prone to failure.

Steve

Thats a favourite, they do normaly catch and then stop when you release the key though....

[Andy B]

My Pinto engined Cortina once died when the carbon 'brush?' in the centre of the dizzy fell out. Lots of HT to the dizzy but nothing out of it.
You haven't left the rotor arm sat on the inner wing have you?   I've never ever done that!!

[Martin_1962]

Rotor arm loose - has happened to me

[Omegatoy]

Im betting the points have closed up so the dwell angle is wrong and there isnt enough time for the coil to energise to fire the plugs!!!
Omegatoy

[amigov6]

Markie's 1.3 Overhead Valve escort won't start! It just conked out and died with no warning while driving down the road.

We have determined that we have fuel and compression... we have no spark.

Coil has been replaced.

We have proved power to the coil.

We've proved good earth's everywhere.

Distributor is turning.

Cap and Rotor arm look OK

Condensor is new.

When you wiggle the rotor arm, you can see a spark at the points.

We're not really sure what to look at next! Any idea's / Tests? Engines don't get more basic than this.. we should be ashamed

I'd swap the whole dizzie if you've got a spare one.  



Do distributers put out a certain amount of charge to the plugs?  Is that said charge high enough?

Not sure how we would test.... distributor is completely mechanical!!