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Hello All,
I have an uber oddball starting issue. My 95 F150 for whatever reason will not start unless the coil wire at the dizzy is sitting in this configuration. The second it gets put down onto the cap the engine dies and won't start- rig it up and starts right up. Engine won't start while it's snapped onto the cap either. The cap/rotor is new, the coil wire ohms out, multiple coils /modules used always the same outcome. Grounds all seem to check out. Any thoughts or ideas are appreciated at this point.

Thx,
Matt

The rotor is shorting to ground, replace it or fit the old one.

Try the old rotor and cap (sorry, I hit post before finishing the original). My brother's Discovery had the same issue, I finally twigged and used the old rotor and away it went. Yours have too much spark energy, so it is grounding to the distributor shaft (I suspect) through the rotor body (or jumping over it or across the inside of the cap), lifting the lead takes away some of the spark energy and allows the rotor insulation to conduct the spark where it's supposed to go. My $0.02.

Rod- the exact same thing happened with the old cap and rotor. I'm at the point where the module tests good, the coil tests good, the grounds all test good (my buddy tested all the grounds and said the ohm reading on them were good), the computer seems to run the engine perfectly fine, we ran a series of tests (1 was a video on a 96 F150 with the exact same results of a no start) that were posted online and the fix was the Hall effect on the dizzy. All I can think of is the coil wire off allows some favorable resistance change that allows the engine to start. I was up til like 3am and I'm getting out of bed now to go get a new distributor and since it's Sunday - pray a little but this fixes the issue lol!

Rod, by pulling the wire away from the post, you increase the resistance in that circuit. If you did have a grounding issue on the shaft, this would make it worse as it would make it a much more attractive current path. Cap and rotor suspect. Cheap Chinese shit?

Also, coil may be dieing, will not put out enough juice to work at lower resistance levels.

New distributor isn't the issue

BDKW1 wrote:Also, coil may be dieing, will not put out enough juice to work at lower resistance levels.

With that kind of spark energy, I'd doubt the coil dying is the problem. However, if the coil is shorting internally, it could up the secondary voltage to a point where it will find the path of least resistance to ground. Pulling the lead like does increase resistance, yes, but decreases the excess spark to the point the factory insulation can prevent an arc out.

Put a run of the mill coil wire on and no change.

What I have:
-spark at the plugs
-output of the coil
-40psi at the fuel rail
-injector pulse

ECU failure?

I bought one just a minute ago off eBay-- well we will see lol