Well i have a 79 with electronic distributor. I am running a 2nd gen coil on the leading but my trailing does not work, they never has. Not sure what has happened, but the J109 and coil on the trailing are good. I have looked in to the direct fire off the leading part of the dizzy cap and i dont think i want to go that route. I have looked over the wiring schematics in my manual and the trailing off the J109 go quite a few places. At first i thought the problem might be simple so i have a new coil and its charging and the J109 has current to the quick connect plug but it will not discharge the coil. Now i am wondering if i can leave the wires that are there alone and run a wire to the trailing coil off the J109 plug to make it discharge??? thanks for the help robert

 

?????

 

Hey Rob,

First check the voltages to both coil terminals (+ and -) and both ignitor terminals. All should read battery voltage when the igniton is on and the car not running.

The wiring is like this:
-B terminal on J-109 and coil + gets 12v switched
-C terminal on J-109 connects to the coil -

That's it. If these connection are there and you have power, you should be getting spark if the ignitor/coil are good. The trailing igntior is the one closest to the alternator.

Couple questions:
- are the coils from an electronic ignition car ('81-'85 or '80)?
- there are normally ballast resistors in the '79 igntion. Did you remove/bypass them?

Also, the '79/'80 cars only operated trailing part-time due to the thermal reactor. Because of this, the tach signal comes from the leading ignition instead of the trailing.

 

Sounds like the trailing needs to be rewired, bypassing all the relays that were used to shut it off on the original point dizzy setup. Run new wires from the + and - of the coil, to the ignitor, using the post above as a reference. If that doesn't make it work, then it has either a bad ignitor or coil.

 

i did not change anything over, just a new dizzy and new coil and new J109 (used but good), i was planning on doing like above just was not sure if it was okay to do so. Well this pretty much finishes this thread i hope thanks for the help, im going out to try it ill let you know. Robert