Hello people,
My car had been standing for two or three months (outside). It started up perfectly on choke as usual. After having driven for about 15 minutes the car started to lose power. It was not a mechanical issue so I risked driving back home. It was rush hour so traffic was slow. When almost home, the car had lost all power except for running idle. Any amount of throttle would make the car sputter and die. The logical thing of course was to poddle along the road in second gear at idle engine speed. After getting home I removed the carb, dissasembled, cleaned etc... the ususal. I also added some fresh oil to the dashpot. After placing the carb back on the car it fired up instantly. I was able to rev it to 3000 maybe and it sputtered quite a lot then died. It hasn't started since.
I checked for spark from the HT lead however there was no sign of spark. I noticed a crack in the coil and the terminals seemed very corroded so I have replaced the coil. Still no spark. The old and new coil are both meant for electronic ignitions.
The car is a 1988 red hot with a 1991 1275 engine. This engine came with an electronic dizzy. This dizzy has never given me issues so I am not really sure if my issue lies in this distributor. When I originally swapped the dizzy (during engine swap) I made sure to swap the ballast wire for a non-ballast wire. I have driven many miles since the engine swap so it seems to be related to it standing for a longer period. Corrosion of a connection somewhere possibly?
The sparkplugs are black/wet so fuel is not the issue.
What should I look at to diagnose this spark that seemed to have slowly lost its strength and eventually vanished completely?
Regards,