Bad luck

Tonight I took the Mustang for a little drive and for the first time ever, it died on me just as the light went green and I wanted to accelerate... It would crank but not fire so I had no choice but to push it to the side. Thankfully a friendly motorcyclist helped me out. After waiting for road side assistance for about 4 hours (it was a hot day and they were really busy) they showed up. I told the guy I thought it was the ignition and his first guess was a blown fuse. So we looked (I never looked at my fuse box before) and what do you know? A fuse had blown! So he thought he'd quickly replace it but that didn't happen, well, the fixing did but not quick ;-) He had to manufacture a fuse because he had none that fitted which resulted in the construction below.

The fuse that was in was 30A I believe... That's a LOT!

It was late and I left the car in my garage. More later...

At home I looked up the fuse box. Apparently it only needs a 14A fuse which I had to order...

Meanwhile I was wondering what was causing the short. Although I was able to drive home, soon every fuse I put in blew as soon as I turned the key to the ON position, not even starting. After playing the elimination game the culprit appeared to be the ignition coil. It was also double wired which was odd.

So I spent a couple of nights studying the electrical diagrams of my car and figured out the correct way of wiring the coil.

I also ordered a new coil and wired it according to specs. Haven't had a problem since :-)

The small ignition improvement

So this week I received a new distributor cap and new spark plug wires. Alltogether they don't cost too much and it's an easy way to check if this fixes the starting troubles I had last time.

I don't know how long the old wires have been in there but last time I found that the engine was running erratic and I think not all 8 cilinders were firing.

This is the inside of the old cap. Looks a bit worn out to me...

The new cap.

I should've also ordered a new rotor but I forgot. So I just fixed this one up a bit. (This is "before").

After replacing everything the engine fired up on the second attempt. Very happy wth that.

I took a quick testdrive to the airport where I also made some dusk-shots.

Nice :-)

Checking a spark plug and the distributor

I wanted to check a few things in the ignition system today, mainly the spark plugs and the distributor.

Actually I was thinking of just replacing all 8 spark plugs but getting the easiets one out was already such a pain in the ass that I just put it back and left the other 7 alone.

So I now know that there are ACDelco plugs in it and that the one I took out seems OK. Well, I think.

OK, yes?

Then I had a look in the distributor. I didn't know exactly how it works but when I found out I was pretty perplexed. So the blue thingy in the picture below just shaves against the copper contacts here? Really?

Not sure if this looks OK or not...