Jcon

I had been told that a good test of the dist belt was to disconnect the coil input to the primary distributor. The car should start. Mine just cranks ...it coughs and sputters so there is some spark, but it won't start.

If I try to start it from primary only it starts. It sounds different, but it starts.

Does this mean I have a distributor / belt problem.

Jeff

asbi

See my recent thread, "Secondary Dizzy Problem", just about to finish the story.

Jcon

How do I safely test the secondary coil? I figure it's either a bad coil or the dist. belt has skipped a tooth.

Jeff

Richard Curtis

to test for a bad coil: An old kart racer's trick that seems to work on cars, is to pull one of the secondary distributor spark plug leads, insert a spare plug, ground it against something, and have someone crank the engine while you observe the color of the spark. If the spark is blue, your coil is okay. If the color is red, yellow, orange, etc. -- any color but blue -- replace the coil. On most fuel-injected cars, if you depress the accelerator fully while cranking, the car won't start while you doing this test. I don't know if this is true for Porsches; haven't tried it yet.