1951 Petrol fordson major won't go

bradleyduncan · Jul 6, 2010

1. Is it important to have copper wire spark plug leads rather than todays automotive leads.

2. Does my rotor arm need to be making full contact with the brass points on cap.

3. How do I check the measurement of the points if I don't have a gauge, what is the purpose of the points and condenser on the distributor.

4. When I press ignition to start can smell petrol I know the coil is okay but she does not even try to start if the timing was out it should at least give me a couple of putt putt's but nothing.

5. Coil is a round, it is a 12 volt bosh does not have a bleed resister does it need one.

6. Exhaust manifold is all good

Can anyone help me thank you

Dandy Dave · Jul 7, 2010

1. Yes our early tractors like wires with a metal core.

2. No, the spark will jump a small gap.

3. You will need a gage to get the points set correctly. I have set them by eye myself but that is with 40 years of experiance.

4. The points act as an on off switch to excite the windings in the coil. The condenser holds a charge and dampens the power to the points and keeps them from burning up quickly.

5. These early tractors do not need an external condensor on the coil. The 9N, 8N, 2N. Ford series tractors did use a resister with a front mount Distributor. the petro fordson are rare over here so I cannot say for sure, I would venture to guess that if you have 12 volt system, with a 12 volt coil that it would not need it.

Anonymous-0 · Jul 7, 2010

It's possible that some part of the breaker points is touching the housing and grounding out. Maybe the condenser has gone bad. Or maybe the wire is touching something. If you take the middle wire that goes to the coil out of the distributer and hold it about 1/16 inch from the engine and crank it over, you should see sparks. Maybe not at the right time, but that's a good sign anyway. [If you're afraid of shocks use something insulated to hold the end of the wire]

Use a contininuity tester to see if the juice goes through the small wire between the distributer and the coil. If you snap the points with a screw driver, does it throw sparks? If the front piston is at top dead center, is the rotor pointing to the wire that goes to that spark plug?
My 3 cylinder Ford has a "hot" wire that feeds 12V to the ignition only when cranking. It comes off the solenoid and by-passes the resistor. It then cuts back to 6 volts, which comes from the switch and goes through the resistor for running. Might be the same on a Major. I have one, buy I haven't figured that out yet. There are coils that can take 12 volts continuously.

Mike Farmer · Jul 8, 2010

Hi If you send me (or post here) your email address I'll send you copies of all the "ignition" pages from my Petrol Engine Manual and the fault finding chart I'm quite happy to do so for anyone else as well. Its just tooooooo much hassle to post it all here. MTF

1951 Petrol fordson major won't go

bradleyduncan

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Dandy Dave

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Anonymous-0

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Mike Farmer

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