Eli K

Hi Folks,

Did some searching as my 964 was idling eratically and hesitated a bit going over 4000 RPM. Went through the distributors, all looked in order. Plug wires are less than a year old.
When I disconnected the coil wire from the primary (right side) distributor car wouldn't start. Did the same to the secondary (left) distributor, everything started just fine. Am I safe to assume it's a faulty coil? should I check something else before placing an order?

Thanks!
Eli

DaveK

First - never check your coils this way. You should disconnect the plug from the coil, not from the distributor since there is still very high voltage being sent through that wire.

But apart from that - I suspect it's not your coil that's the problem. More likely it's your distributor belt so the second distributor is not being turned. You need to get it looked at ASAP - there is a (slim) chance that the secondary distributor is firing constantly depending on where it stopped.

Eli K

Thanks Dave. The car was off, both times I disconnected the wires, so hopefully not too dangerous in that regard.
I'm thinking of swaping the coil packs and trying the test again to see if it trully is the bad coilpack causing the problem.

DaveK

Both belts? There is only one distributor belt.

Gordon Attar

Coil could be suspect as well seemingly its the cause of quite a few hesitancy problems, you will need to remove both the distributors and see if they rotate together, if they dont then the belts gone.

bhensarl

siberian,
I'm really very sorry if this is a stupid question, but when you say "both belts are fine, at least as far as I can tell by just looking," are you referring to the alternator and engine driven fan belts? You can't see the distributor belt unless you do some disassembly of the distributor itself, to include removing the caps.
Brian

Eli K

Right, thanks guys!
Just finished reading through the instructions, and debating on wheather to do this myself or have a local shop do the work for upward $500

DaveK

$500? To replace the belt? No way!

I think OPCs charge about that to replace the whole assembly. An independent can do just the belt for a lot less!

Eli K

The distributor belt does not appear to be broken. I took both distributor caps off and turned the engine by hand. Both rotors are rotating insync. They're not pointing in the same direction, but I'm not sure if they're suppose to..
The car still runs rough, hesitates on take off, misses and loses power above 4000 RPM . A complete tune up was performed about 4000 miles ago, which included replacing plug wires, plugs, cap, rotor, among other general things....

WMRiceman

I had the same thing happen to me. I could idle on the secondary ignition with the primary disabled but not the other way around. I switched the coils and the problem switched. 2 new coils installed and all was well. The reason I started troubleshooting this was I had a hesitation at the 4k to 5k RPM at anything but full throttle. This hesitation was driving me nuts and no codes were being set on the hammer. Hope this helps, mark

Eli K

Was born and raised there. Didn't come to the States until '92.

Sounds like exactly the same thing. I'll give a new coil a shot, thanks!