392 won't start

7

73travelall

New member
I have a 1973 International Travelall with the 392 and stock ignition. It has a new distributor, points, starter, spark plugs and plug wires. It last ran over a year ago and when it quit it would idle and rev fine in park but as soon as you put it in drive and take off it would start cutting out and run really rough with an intermittent miss. If I pumped the throttle and put it in park, after stopping of course, I could sometimes get it to smooth out, but if I put it in drive it would act up again. I ended up having it towed home and I started it hoping I could drive it into the garage to work on it. It started fine, I put it in drive and it started forward, I made it about 15 feet before it cut out and died. Ever since then it will not even fire and I've put a voltage meter on the coil and have found that I am only getting about 8-9 volts at the coil. I have tried to run a new wire from the starter to the coil to see if that is the issue with no change. I even put at wire from the battery to the coil to see if it would show 12V but it still only shows the 8-9 volts. Any thoughts on what to check/do is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
 
If you have checked all other items, I would install a new condenser.

To answer your voltage question. If you still have the oem resistance (wire or ballast resistor) between the ignition switch and the positive coil terminal, with the ignition on and the points closed, you should read roughly what you got for voltage 8-9 on the positive coil terminal. If the points are open, you will see full battery voltage there.
 
Ok. I'll check and make sure the points aren't suck closed but the voltage doesn't exceed the 8-9 volts as I have someone try and start it. It does have the original resistor wire to the ignition.
 
I definitely recommend verifying that you see battery voltage
(~12v) at the pos. coil terminal with the points open. I have seen people hook the choke heater wire to the coil. Not a good thing.
 
Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to get back to it yet with work and being busy last weekend. I should get some time to work on it later this well and I'll let you know.
 
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