Took the Beetle out to a rallycross to spectate, but things did not go exactly as planned. Broke down about half an hour away from the venue, and EvanB and wae came and rescued me. Hung out, spectated, ran grid, and tried to diagnose the problem. At first, I thought it was a fuel issue, as it was not getting any at all. I am not so sure anymore. Could also be ignition. wae trailered the car home, and I drove his Neon, which is a total beast. The Beetle is now sitting at the bottom of my driveway awaiting more diagnosis and repair. I've got a bunch of work to do around that house I'd planned to do yesterday, but should be able to spend a little time messing with it today.
In reply to eastsideTim :
Didn't get any other pics, sadly.
Vintage RallyCross class is a go!
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
I'm game for vintage rallycross!
It is not fuel. Hit it with some starting fluid, and nothing happened. The battery is on a float charger to build it back up after all the work it did turning the starter yesterday and today. It's started to drizzle, too. If it's dry later, I'll toss the battery in and grab my timing light, but I am going to bet it's the coil or distributor. I may have to go back to points ignition for a while.
Mystery time. Swapped in a new coil, and it would not start. Swapped back to the points distributor, and it would still not start. A little after this, eastsideWife was done with work, so I hooked up the timing light and she cranked the car. No signal at all to the tach on the timing light. I'm confused. The coil is getting power, but I think the battery is not in great shape, seems to have dropped about .5 volts to 12V about 3-4 days after it was fully charged. My two ideas right now:
- Both coils are bad. I kind of doubt it, but have seen DOA new coils before.
- The battery has enough power to turn over the starter, but not enough to energize the coil at the same time. Possible, but I'd think the car wouldn't have died while running on the way to the rallyx if this was the case. It simply would have not started up after it was last shut off.
Any ideas of what else to check? I have an ancient Bosch coil I can throw on there, and may try that tonight or tomorrow.
I have seen multiple times lately that the wire from the points to the coil is grounded on the distributor body, resulting in no spark. Is the ground side of the coil straight to ground while cranking, or does the points close the circuit?
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :
Hmm, for the current coil, there was no wire to ground. I cannot remember if that is how the points setup worked, but there is only one wire off the points distributor, and I put it to the 12V side. Maybe it didn't belong there. Hope I didn't mess anything up.
Looks like the wire from the points distributor was supposed to be connected to the negative side of the coil. I did that, and still no start. Not sure if it could be damaged by 12V or not, I'd hope not.
Probably cooked the condenser if you sent 12v through it.
Iasy way to check is manually open the points with the key on. It should have a tiny spark jump the points
You need you a dwell meter to check to see if the points are working right. Positive side of coil goes to positive voltage (through a ballast resistor on 12v systems, generally), negative side of coil gets switched by points. Spark happens when the points open and break the connection, the amount of spark is down to how long the points were closed.
I wonder if a DVOM set to duty cycle would work.
If the points open and close, I'd make sure the distributor is grounded...
Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) said:
Probably cooked the condenser if you sent 12v through it.
Iasy way to check is manually open the points with the key on. It should have a tiny spark jump the points
I may check that later. I suspect I've boogered it up. At least a condensor is cheap. I'll tack it on to my next parts order for the S10.
Pete, I seem to recall just using a test light to adjust the points distributor, based on some instructions in the how to keep your vw alive book. A dwell meter would be better, but this method seems to work alright.
Found a condenser in my stash, but it turns out it is for a mechanical advance distributor, and won't physically fit my vac advance distributor. Cleaned up the distributor enough to get a part number off it, so I should be able to order the proper one.
I am now more confused. Replaced the condenser and points in the distributor (points wiring disintegrated when I pulled the old condenser). Tried to start it. Nothing. Switched to the coil that I removed when I changed over to electronic ignition. Nothing. eastsideWife cranked the car while I checked the timing light. Still no ignition. Just in case, I changed the coil wire. Still no ignition. Voltage is getting to the coil just fine, but not to the spark plug wires.
I've got nothing. May see if I can get my father in law to come out and look at it with a fresh set of eyes, as I wonder if I am missing something obvious, after all of this diagnosis.
Is the negative side being grounded and not grounded?
Not sure if this helps, but here goes....
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
Is the negative side being grounded and not grounded?
I gapped the points, if that is what you are asking? I use the engine block as the ground when I test positive voltage, so it should be good.
Dirtydog, that pretty much looks like it, except for the coil wiring not being too specific on which wires are connected to which terminal (positive vs negative). I've got the condenser hooked up to the negative side of the coil. Positive side gets power from the ignition. There's also a connection on the positive side for the choke, but I've tried it with and without it connected, in case it was causing a problem.
It's possible I just got a batch of multiple DOA parts, but I feel like there is something obvious I am missing. Battery is back in the garage on the float charger fro now, after another round of turning the starter way too much.
The points portion of the distributor is basically just a fancy on / off switch. If you remove the wire going to the coil from the points, you could set up a little battery and light and test that, or use a meter. To use a meter connect one end of the meter to the wire that was connected to the coil, connect the other end of the meter to ground. Then measure for resistance or ohms, it should jump from almost zero to a large mega ohms or something.
There are ways to test a coil, but you might want to get a new one. Look for the MSD high vibration coil, I think it is silver, not red. The standard MSD coil is red, but for this application you might want the vibration coil, more sturdy.
In-laws were over for a grill out today, so my father-in-law and I took a look at the Beetle. Spent a bunch of time diagnosing possible causes, and failing to start it until he discovered I had moved the plug wires one space over when I switched from the electronic ignition. Apparently, on this car, that puts everything just out of sync enough to have it expel any gas/starting fluid before the spark plug fires, so there had been no indication of it firing. In addition, my inductive timing light couldn't pick up the signal from the plug wires at the speed the starter motor was cranking the engine at, so until we pulled a plug wire, and watched for spark, we weren't sure they were firing. My FIL thinks there may still be a wiring issue we need to dig into, but I may just leave it alone for now. I do need to adjust the idle speed again, though, as it is idling at such a low RPM, the oil light comes on.
Most importantly, I was able to move it out of the way, so the Miata is no longer blocked in the driveway.
Chelsea
New Reader
8/31/24 10:25 p.m.
Hi Tim, I am Dan Coughnour's daughter. I see you have not posted about the beetle for quite a while, but, hopefully, you will see this. My father passed away last year and as we have been telling stories, the beetle comes up a lot. I was telling someone about the beetle and googled images to show them. To my surprise, I came across this story and am so thrilled that you have saved the bug. Dad never told us that he got rid of it! Trust me I yelled at him for that one, lol. I have a lot of fun memories with that car, as you can imagine. You have no idea how happy I am that you are putting her back together. If you ever decide to get rid of it, please let me know, I would love to buy it from you. I don't care the condition or if it is 5 years from now, just contact me and I will 100% take it off of your hands. If you never want to get rid of her, trust me I understand that too. I'm just glad to read your updates and see where she goes. Thank you for bringing her back to life and keeping her running in the dirt.
Chelsea Coughnour McCauley ccoughnuts@yahoo.com
In reply to Chelsea :
I'll keep you in mind when it is time to sell. I was sad to hear of your father's passing, but was unable to make it to the funeral. He was definitely a character. The Beetle was one of our main competitors in our early days of rallycross, and I could not bear to see it get parted out.
We had big plans to use it for rallycross again, but life has kind of sidelined that for now. I am still hoping to use it for that again, even if it'll be nowhere as competitive as it was when Dan was driving it. It is still running, and makes it to some of the local cruise ins on occasion.
