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Engine won't fire?

2089 Views 15 Replies 9 Participants Last post by  78machowgn4me, 
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The engine won't fire. It starts to crank but will never catch. It's a 318 4bbl. Car is a '74 Duster. We've tried everything to get it working, and nothing works. We think it has no compression...we have spark and fuel delivery. Any thoughts?
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SpeedDemon383 said:
Well we didn't really put oil into the spark plug holes. And on the new coil we bought, it says 6V. But on the new box it came in, it said 12V. Would that be a problem? The dude behind the counter told us that there shouldn't be a difference. Just I don't think they had coils for '74 Plymouth's. Compression testers. You just hook up the tester to the sparkplug or something? I don't really remember ??? Anyway, any give me more things to do? Our other car just died...damn fuel pump went. Thanks Again!
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If you have a coil rated for 6 volts in a 12 volt system, it won't work. The ballast resistor is bypassed during starting, delivering the full 12V to the coil.
If it fires up, then as soon as you release the key it dies, your ballast resistor is bad.
All internal combustion engines have coils. Your car should take a universal coil, which is the same on every vehicle from the fifties straight on up into the nineties (with a few notable exceptions).
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