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Making 60 miles of a 100 mile return trip on 1 engine

R

rfdlou

Regular Contributor
Engine shut down results in making 60 miles of a 100 mile return trip on 1 engine. 2007 5.7 MPI’s never missed a beat @3100 on the 100 mile trip up. Stayed the weekend. Started up, fueled up took 113 Gals, restarted & took off for home. Ran for 40 miles @3100 & than it just died. Has to be fuel? Other engine is still running. Switch to the tank the good engine is running on but can’t restart. Change the filter can’t restart. Air bound? Prime by turning ignition on for 5 seconds repeatedly. No restart. Check the test port on the fuel rail we have gas. Check for spark, no spark. Now what? We wrapped a line around the prop shaft & tied it off to prevent wind milling Ran @2100 on one @ about 8 knots headed for home. Did some testing today & found spark @ the coil wire but not @ the plugs. As the engine cranks it sounds like the timing is way off & it wants to run backwards. Remove the tiny “torx”screws holding the distributor cap on. Carbon looks ok. No tracking, no moisture, no cracks. Remove tiny tiny “torx” screws holding rotor. Test with ohm meter @ find a high reading. Change rotor. No Start. Connect coil wire back on the cap & using a jumper from ground held close to the carbon I get a weak spark. Weak coil? Swap with the good engine no start. Swap distributor cap as last resort & it starts. Put bad cap in good engine no start.
 
That had to be a pain in the butt. Had a much shorter trip of about 12 miles on one engine and it was like running a loaded barge. It had taken a long time to get back also. I was quite surprised to discover how the 2nd engine gets us from 7 to 30 knots on a 34 Silverton Convertible. We were just barely plowing thru the water. Glad to see you solved it but would have been nice to see it 60 miles earlier. Did you ever discover the problem with the old cap?
 
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Delco Voyager (EST) distributors?

Delco or aftermarket cap that went bad?

How many hours have accumulated on the cap that went bad?
 
Mark, Everything is original 2007 with 250 Hrs. painted a nice Crusader blue. The failure in the cap appears to be internal, between the carbon & the coil wire post. The cap has aluminum inserts with some white oxidation. The AC Delco D329A Distributor Cap has brass inserts & I am told is superior to the Crusader RA108009 cap. The rotor is made of two pieces of metal sandwiched together with a plastic weld. I measured some resistance across the rotor & thought that was the problem.

Found this cool video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9tjjxyEnbY
 
Rotors will work with modest resistance between the center and the tip.

Never had decent service out of a cap with the aluminum (looking) internal contacts. The caps with the Brass ends have always provided better service lifes. back in the old days, that was the easiest way of ID'ing a real thunderbolt cap from an aftermarket cap. FWIW, we only replaced one distributor cap on an old inline 6 merc outboard. Due to it being cracked. We always took them off and washed them, blew them dry, and reinstalled them. Don't know what they used for contacts but they would go forever.

Guess you have an addition to your onboard spare parts list...
 
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