Ford 8N Electronic Ignition Installation

hey everybody guess what's broke down it's the four to eight inn again with more problems now i don't blame the tractor it is just old um so here's the problem we're having today it'll start and it just won't stay running more specifically it will start and run for a little while a few minutes when the motor is cold um and then it'll just fall on its face and then once it's warmed up it just won't start now i troubleshot the the fuel side first it is a brand new rebuilt carb uh getting good flow to the carburetor to the intake so i don't think it's that um it does have the old points and condenser ignition system so that's what i'm leaning towards next and instead of really going in too deep and replacing it all piecemeal hoping i get the right thing i'm just going to put an electronic ignition on it it needed to be done anyway so even if this doesn't fix the problem at least i'll have an upgraded ignition system and we can check that off the list of possible problems and move on to the next thing so here's what it does currently and she dies so i'll be perfectly honest this is the only machine i have ever ran or operated that had a point system so i will not pretend like i know everything about this or know much of all about this another reason why i'm just skipping the the tinkering on it and just switching to a better system altogether i got the tried and true pertronix igniter electronic ignition i also got a new coil i don't even know if i needed the new coil but these aren't very expensive so i figured let's not take a chance as well as the distributor gasket and uh ignition coil gasket set now it's pretty straightforward i'm not going to go through this step-by-step per se because there's lots of good information out there already i'm just going this is more if you're having the same problem this may fix it because there's not a whole lot of uh hey this is my problem what's the correct you know step to fix it videos out there at least not that i can find so maybe this will be helpful for somebody so first step we're going to pull off our well i'm going to disconnect the battery first then we're going to pull off our distributor wires or spark plug wires we will unbolt it from the block and then pull the cap or the coil and the distributor off of the tractor pulling my uh little sparklator wires off and uh that didn't look so hot of course i didn't get the cap with my rebuild kit ah i hope tractor supplies got one all right i think you could probably take the coil off by itself first in fact it might fit out a little easier let me pull it off so it's just got that little bale wire holding that on let it go okay so really it's pretty simple you've got your two mounting bolts to the block you've got your four distributor wires on top of your coil you have this wire that goes to the ignition i guess so you pull that off so it's three bolts or three nuts four wires takes just a few minutes the gaskets on these all look pretty good one thing that i do know just from reading is that you want to make sure to identify the direction of your rotor bug it's pointing at like almost six o'clock so this i'm gonna look at this later so i remember back looks kind of gross stuff's falling out on me anyway so remember they say where this goes um since i broke this that might be repairable maybe not if they don't have my tractor supply i might try to get away without it but we'll see so i'm going to take this home and put it on the bench clean it up run by tractor supply i'm obviously going to need a new spark plug wire as well and then we will take this apart and put the new kit on i mentioned needing another spark plug wire which got me to thinking i don't know which spark plug this is it does look like they are numbered one two three four on the cap here i don't know if that's a pocket knife or a casting mark not sure um but that begs the question which cylinder is number two so i've got the multimeter hooked up here we're going to do a continuity test if you're not familiar with what that means it's where you take your two leads and you put one probe on one side of the wire in this case this is my this is the wire i know i need to replace and then i can take the other lead and touch the opposite end and if i get it if i get to the right plug wire it'll be so i've gone through them all and i've determined that it's this is number two because when i put it in the end of the other side of the spark plug wire it beeps so i know which one i need to replace it apparently it goes forward to back cylinders one two three and four just so you know and how that may not even be right i'm just guessing there so we need a spark plug wire about yay long a distributor cap cover and a beer okay so i said i wasn't going to go into detail but here we are so here's what we've done so far we've taken the two bolts out of the block that hold the distributor to the tractor taking off the cap distributor cap which was broken i don't think that caused the problem and looked like just based on when i pulled the wire off uh there was no plastic inside so i think this was broken before the previous owner just didn't want to spend the time or money fixing it so we took the cap off took the coil off pulled it off the tractor so here's where we're at note obviously the position of the rotor bug we're going to save that there's a little retaining clip inside here that we're going to try to get out not as much tension on it as i expected note the flat part goes towards the timing bolt oh actually i think i need to hey buddy save this yes sir um mom said that did you know that mom threw away your toothbrush wow are you serious okay well um we got well we already have two ones so i like the way you grab the pink remove the condenser two bolts i got a new toothbrush which one did you say is mine have a pink toothbrush and you have the blue one it's great actually wait what what color is it it's like teal that's yours or mine mine so what color is mine pink they said mine was bluish teal no no i thought yours was green will you make up your mind the green one is mine the puke one is two bolts condenser is removed are you talking to yourself no i'm making a video duh remove the timing nut i think we save the timing hardware okay kind of funky a little crusty and dusty in there it's going to take a good cleaning the uh the bushing though the bushing though doesn't have a lot of slop in it so that's actually pretty good i don't think we'll need to replace that so that's a plus something's not broken all right so the instructions say to remove and save the scent the shim washer i don't see a shim washer anywhere then it goes on to say that they're not actually necessary so i'm assuming at some point in the last 70 years someone before me has taken the shim washer out and tossed it then it says to check the advanced mechanism here for any wear it doesn't really say what indicates where everything looks pretty good one thing i noticed that i found interesting is it is stamped let me see if i can it is stamped from a nine in i found now i have found two n and nine n parts in my eight in i'm starting to wonder if my tractor is actually an eight in or if the part that says 8n is actually just from another tractor i don't know so this looks okay so the next thing you do is find the vent hole on your uh distributor and i'm starting to think maybe i don't have one turns out i don't so i get to drill a hole there should be one here there's not so i gotta drill a quarter inch hole for my wires to come out so oh this distributor is from a night in whatever all right we're gonna drill a quarter inch hole real quick this may or may not blow your mind but this thin aluminum drill is very easy so that's that it's going to give our wires and exit at least i think the one wire that goes to the ballast on the dash do you call it a dash anyway okay drill a hole got it clean the distributor make sure no metal debris is left okay so it's it's it's reassembly time i guess so this is where you clean everything so i'm going to jump off off camera for a second and get this cleaned up a bit all right i let this soak in hot soapy water in the kitchen sink for about one beer minutes and it didn't really do anything it was probably naive of me to think that dirt that's twice as old as i am is not gonna come off with some dawn and wishful thinking so we're gonna get it good and dry and roll with it because it is it is dirty but it you know it's it's that old dirt i don't worry about that so much so we took our our new breaker plate the instructions are bad it says made in usa on the box but i'm telling you right now the person who wrote these instructions was not made in usa and it that's okay but it's a little deceiving because the english is not good the instructions are not very clear but i'm making it through so here's your igniter here's your new breaker plate you take this short black wire and the brass screw that or bolt that it gives you and you run it through this white plastic nylon insulator can you see that so that's what you want it to look like that was not explained well in the instructions whatsoever okay it says it says to use build lube or grease i'm just going to use some dielectric grease and i know this is more for electronics but the store i went to was really hurting for anything worthwhile okay so once you've got this drilled and cleaned you have your new breaker plate set up with igniter bolted on and your short wire ran through the nylon insulator the next step i guess i kind of skipped a step um because we can put the distributor shaft thing back in the housing oh yeah baby all right now we take the breaker plate oh wait do i apply more lube i don't know we're gonna put a little lube on it because yeah hey there's the washer the washer's on there after all i guess that's where it goes i'm gonna roll that too okay let's put the breaker plate back in after you give her a little love lube this is called the magnet sleeve that goes on before come on dummy it even says it goes on before i just don't trust the instructions now they have deceived me so the magnet sleeve goes on the shaft before the breaker plate and it says it should be like hard to get on oh there it goes now do some some of the booby lube i hope i'm not misleading anyone i kind of trying to interpret these directions apply a very thin layer set the adapter plate over the shaft press down firmly turn the plate lining the slotted tab on the plate with the timing stud hole on the distributor this is a very thin player okay well that's not a thin layer i got thick stuff everywhere good night i went heavy on the on the lube i've got it everywhere help okay whatever i guess this is the uh they they refer to this as the slotted tab so if you're looking at it this way this is a slotted tab you want to put that on the right hand side of the distributor if you're looking at it or where the timing bolt comes through okay and that makes sense because then our red wire igniter wires ballast wire is going to come through that hole that makes sense so i apologize that i'm not working through all these steps on camera i have to kind of just guess my way through them and then hope that it's right but i think we got there the instructions are just misleading so on the timing nut it comes with a bolt that goes through the side of the distributor through this little rectangular plate that previously attached to a threaded spot on the breaker plate like this well the new setup brings a bolt a carriage bolt with the flat side that you're running through the inside the flat side going down onto the new breaker plate the bolt coming out through the previous or the original metal rectangle thing and then you put the nut on i mean these instructions give the harbor freight sawmill a run for its money and you know how i feel about that if you've seen that video so that's that get it centered with this tab it says to start then you put the snap ring back in which is this big kind of c-shape clip the flat side goes on where the timing nut we just installed was so that gives it clearance i hope you can see that see that that's how the clip goes in and then you run the red wire out through the hole you drilled in some cases you'll have a vent screen that you can just pull on you don't have to drill the hole according to the instructions i wish they'd given me like a grommet or something to put over that hole or i would have made a much smaller hole so if you don't have a grommet you could probably get away with it i don't know eight inch hole 16 maybe so now we can put the rotor bug back on and remember you want it to be in the position that it was in when you took it off the tractor because this will correspond with where the pistons are currently situated in the engine so this is important now you can be off this much or this much because it's you've got a 180 degree range of motion here so it doesn't have to be perfect mine was like this but if it's anywhere in here you'll get it lined up just don't do it like that so that's good obviously you want to make sure it turns freely and it does harbor freight did harbor freight what's it called tractor supply did have a distributor cap it was the last one it's just as junky as the one that was broken on there before and we'll put the gasket on not a super high quality gasket that i got here and i'll probably be taking this back off when we install it on the tractor but it snaps into place snaps into place bailing wire comes forward okay what does she look like on top and our new coil our new coil will be making contact with that brass bolt we ran through the nylon insulator and that contact there and the distributor cap positive and negative i guess don't quote me on any of this i'm guessing as i go i don't need a gasket we're just going to put it on for for giggles for now this gasket doesn't fit real well there we go hope this fixes it we'll see all right so tomorrow we will bolt this back onto the tractor we will reattach the ignition coil wire to the top of the coil and we will run this to the right hand side of the ignition ballast and that's it and then we'll put the spark plug wires back on and i'll talk about my spark plug fiasco when i get there so that's all for now all right guys so it's been a couple of weeks and here's the update so we got the electronic ignition and the new distributor cap put on i guess the tractor supply had that cap is like 20 bucks everything seemed to be fine i had the busted spark plug boot so i needed a new one right well so i found one it was hard to find one to match this i don't know where it went uh i went to autozone o'reilly somewhere to find the spark plug wire and they could not just sell me what i needed but i went ahead and made it work oh it's this one here so this is what they had i had to make that guy go into the back like 10 times to bring out all these different spark plugs spark plug wires rather to find one that kind of looked like the one i had so the one on the right there's the one it's the style it came with and then this was the one that they sold me this boot was like this long and i had to cut it down to let it fit on that distributor cap this isn't like the low suppression wire that the electronic ignition kit calls for but i figured dude it's just it's gotta work right so i bought that wire for a dollar i slapped it on the tractor wouldn't start figuring out why and then i remembered i forgot to put the spark plug wires back on the other side of the distributor or the cap and i thought oh dummy so i went around and i got to put this one on and then i realized that i had this problem all along so this is right where so it's like that goes in the distributor this end went back to the spark plug this was rubbing against my water pump pulley so you know what i think was happening all along was when the motor was cold before the motor warmed up this was cold and uh you know we were getting a little bit of spark jumping across there and then as the tractor heated up i'm trying to get my shadow out of there as the tractor heated up this became more pliable and i would lose that spark so cold you know the the plastic constricts and and gets tighter and then when it gets warm and it expands and i think that was my problem all along i probably could have just put a new spark plug wire on there so look at your stuff my points were probably fine but like i said i've been wanting to upgrade for a while and i think i found my problem so i decided well so i had the wrong spark plug wire and a bad spark plug wire i just got a new kit so they sell this on yesterday's tractor this is supposed to be for electronic ignitions they sell it as the high performance front mount distributor wire kit so we're going to put these on i've never made my own spark plug wires i really thought when i bought this this was like a fully booted set i wouldn't have to do that because i don't i don't have that tool and then it gets here and i have pieces to put together so we're gonna see if it's that big of a deal i'll let you know i can't stress enough that this is not a how-to video this is more like a reality episode where you watch me bump through problems and i tell you about how i screw things up even more so this was the spark plug-in that was on there that's what this is what comes with the kit i'm supposed to do something with this guy that wind i need to find something to put on that it's so hard to make videos here because the wind is always blowing so i'm going to put this glove on you and make like one of those wind sock things there we go oh my gosh hopefully that helps with the wind um but you look ridiculous with the sock hanging off you like that okay so i think what we do we're going to take a measurement so we'll make this one number four so this would be the longest one and i won't have to cut it so i think you want to trim back this initial this first layer of insulation maybe no what in the hell is in there the spark plug wire is full of string what i mean i know i'm not a mechanic but i expect spark plug wires to have like stranded copper inside not string what is this like some sort of nylon fabric what in the hell did i buy high quality how does that conduct electricity maybe was that black part supposed to stay on there i don't know all right lucky for you guys i make mistakes for a living um apparently this uh little black what i thought was insulation is a graphite housing and it's supposed to stay on there so cool all right so we'll leave it on there one less step so one thing i do know for sure is you want to put your boot on first i'm going to put this on now just so i don't forget i was probably about to forget on that last one so since i already cut the insulation off that other one i'm going to just make that one of my shorter cables boy these need to heat it up or what a little spit on it i'll take it easy this is a family show she didn't work it on there come on all right you guys just want to see me do one let's just see if i can do one and then i'll i'll skip the video for the rest i thought this was going to take five minutes i've been fighting this for five minutes already all right which side which side do i crimp i think this bigger side is the one you crimp so you fold this graphite over did i mention i don't have the right crimpers for this huh and then i think you just squeeze the snot out of it so i have these these are like uh i think these are like coax crimpers i figured i would try them just because they're all i have laying around i don't know if it's even gonna fit bad idea bad idea i think i need to get it tighter first i'm gonna pinch this hey i need that stuff i'm gonna pinch this down a little bit okay i'm skeptical about this graphite thing you know what i mean okay that that seems to seems to work better i wonder if i can just use my wire strippers to get this tight i mean kind of working as i inch it around hang on this might work so don't let me talk you out of buying the proper tools to do the job because there's something to be said about having the right tools um and i probably would have bought the right tools except the only thing that persuaded me to try it with what i had was um that i couldn't get them shipped here fast enough for today i've got like 6 000 projects and i've got to move on i need this tractor to run i've got like 15 trees to cut down and i need to move them logs i'm trying to clear the spot for the castle so we can start the dirt work and i can't let a spark plug wire slow me down so that's why i didn't wait that's why i'm being impatient not really impatient that's why i'm just kind of forcing the matter see if this coax will crimp that now okay i don't know let go hey let go i don't want to smash the hell out of this thing shoot did i break it okay well i probably overdid that but it is um not gonna come off let's pull the boot back over it and see how it fits on the distributor okay so the spark plug connection that we made actually fits in there really good um so you're probably asking yourself you're just going to leave that spark plug wire sitting there against that belt no not but i'm also not gonna run through that tube again either one reason um because i i i don't think i need to two that these spark plug wires are not actually good enough i i don't want to spend the time monkeying without them just to have to undo it and i will make sure they're properly secured but keep in mind that if you are wanting to run through that chase uh do not put your end on yet just run all your fish all your wires through and then crimp them once you've done the done the run through that conduit there will save you some headache for sure all right the new spark plug wires are on i did apply a dab of that dielectric grease to the end of the plug wire i think it's ready i have not tried to start it so i take that back i did try to start at the day i put the single new spark plug wire on when i found out that i had a gaping void in plug wire three so it hasn't ran but i think it should so this is a true cold start if this doesn't work i'm never gonna wear this vice grip garage hat again so cross your fingers derek i didn't mean that i'm gonna keep wearing this hat okay i left the key switch on now my battery's dead all right i stole the battery out of my bracer put the tractor battery on the charger now we're going to see if this thing will fire up or if i have to go to the tractor store today i'm not talking about tractor supply i'm talking like tractor dealership [Laughter] oh [Laughter] i put on the sparklator light bulb and if that thing doesn't flash when you hit the start button it means you're not getting fire that was the problem that's what i suspected because well i i i know i was i knew i was getting fuel and it just made sense that i wasn't getting spark um so i tested that i had power to my coil and i did so that didn't make sense so i just i just popped this old boy off here the coil i literally just took it off looked at it thought to myself i'm gonna put this back on i did that didn't do anything put it back on i don't know it just felt weird and i hit the start button again and this thing fired off so fast and easy it spooked me let me show you where's my button okay i'm pumped and i'm done no more she's gonna run great now you're not gonna see me post another i fix my tractor again video in two weeks that's it hey i'm about to get back to work thanks for watching see ya

Channel: Justin Wheeler

Views: 2,976

Rating: 4.5862069 out of 5

Keywords: ford, 8n, ford 8n, tractor, electronic, ignition, how to, electronic ignition, install, pertronix, farm, homestead, diy

Id: JLGu0txu-sU

Length: 40min 28sec (2428 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021