Thanks in advance: I have a 1986 Ranger, 2.9 no start situation. I'm not getting spark from the coil or to the plugs. I have to fix this quickly as I'm in a project crunch, and the truck is used for our business. My question is, should I shoot for replacing the ignition module first, or swap out a coil (I have a spare)... or both? And, is it possible to remove the module from the distributor without taking the distributor off the engine?

Thanks guys!


Tony

 

Put a test light or volt meter on the coil + and - wires, you can unplug wires from the coil to test them
Crank the engine over and see if the light or volts pulse, this means the TFI module is getting a pulse from the Hall effect sensor inside the distributor and it passing that on to the coil to cause it to spark
Does the vehicle have a tachometer?
If so it should move when cranking engine, thats from the pulse

And test if coil + wire has 12volts with key on, test light or volt meter on + wire and ground to engine metal
Then same test while engine is cranking, there can be a separate power path while cranking, which may be bad, so no 12v to coil while cranking

If there is no Pulse when cranking then could be Hall effect sensor or TFI module, so you should probably pull the distributor in any case

Test for system seen here: https://therangerstation.com/tech_li...agnostic.shtml


An ignition coil works by cutting the ground(-)
With key on the coil gets 12volts all the time
The TFI Module controls the ground, each time ground is cut the coil sends out a high voltage spark, this is also the tachometer pulse
Then coil is grounded again, to power up, for the next spark

The Sensor in the distributor is what tells the TFI module when to cut the ground, the timing pulse for the engine

 

Ron,

Thanks for that! No tach on this old girl. I'll get right on it... soon as the snow stops.

Much appreciated!


Tony