Ford N Series Tractor "The coil is bad......or is it?"

[Music] welcome to another edition of the kilted homesteader today we're going to talk about testing the coil only one type of coil on your n series tractors there's lots of other videos out there but when it came to testing the site the i have a side mount distributor on my 1952 ford 8n there wasn't a lot on there how to test the coil and so i wanted to kind of help people out again i'm not an ex an expert in electron electrician or in testing but um this video is a show a lot of guys say oh my tractor's acting this way they automatically oh the coil's bad and that may be the case but it could be points it could be condenser or if you have an electronic ignition it could be a faulty electronic ignition we're not going to get into testing all those things today we're just going to talk about a basic side mount distributor coil test and some of this may be very similar to the front mount coils but i don't have a front mount tractor so i can't test that or test that theory one of the most valuable tools you can have as a home mechanic working on your own pieces of equipment whether it be a lawnmower a tractor a car anything like that is a thing called a multimeter i got this multimeter probably back in 2002 and i'm going to tell you this thing has been worth its weight in gold i think i bought it as craftsman or sears years ago and this thing has paid for itself over and over again with the ability to test circuitry and test systems to make sure they're working properly or to see if there's any problems so again this isn't going to be an all-inclusive video but this is going to be a basic overall on how to how i tested my coil to determine that it was bad okay i'll let the cat out of the bag the coil was bad on this situation so first thing you want to do is there's i'm going to explain to you there is a primary and a secondary field in your coil okay the primary fields are the ones that are connected to this which is a whole bunch of windings wrapped around a center coil a center section here also in inside your coil it can be either filled with epoxy like this one was or an oil and sometimes this one you could shake it you won't hear anything rattling inside with some of that brand new coil that is filled with oil you shake it a little bit you can hear a little oil moving around in there slopping around a little bit and that's there to keep the coil cooled down and help they maintain the its perfect homeostasis so to speak so the primary windings are connected here you have a negative on this side and a positive this side often you'll see it'll say positive or neg on one of them and if one's neg the other is positive or you'll see a plus sign for positive or net minus sign for negative this has the plus and minus so to test this coil we're going to first test the primary windings in the coil to see where they're at now when you connect to your multimeter right here your black is going to connect your ground or you're one that's often referred to as the com like common ground and your red is going to connect on this one here if i go on this side it works for a tachometer which is very handy i've used that too or this side here is for testing ohms and resistance ohm is a ohms or is a measurement of resistance in an electrical current so if you have um if i turn this on right here we'll go to the lower settings because that's what we're going to be using there's a whole bunch of ohm settings that you can use for this here we're going to go down to the lower lower one right there one of the lower ones right here this is saying 0.1 which is telling me that there's infinite amount of gnomes or gnomes ohms and because of that the infinite amount of ohms they you would refer that as a break in the connection there's a break in the wire because it's not working however if i then took these two leads they're obviously broken there's no connection to them so we have infinite amount of gnomes on this one referred to as i said gnomes again ohms yeah the gnomes are going to hate me ohms is 0.1 meaning infinite okay now if i connect them together touch them together that reading is going to change to resistance the better the connection the lower that ohm reading not gnome reading the lower that ohm reading will be i have an alligator clip together zero resistance it's telling me any current i'm putting through all of it's getting through and it's making the connection good so that being said we're going to test the ohms in this coil now one thing i do want to tell you there are different types of coils there's ones that have a built-in resistor which create resistor is creating ohms it's giving a little barrier for that electricity to have to work through and there's ones that have no internal resistance the original ones for the six volt tractor will have an external resistor in other words there should be no resistance in the coil when we test it now my tractor was converted to 12 volt prior to me getting it and i put an electricity to put an electronic ignition on it i put a petronix on it so i needed a coil with an internal resistor and the internal resistor on this one is point or not point three is three ohms of resistance is what i should be measuring when i connect to the primary windings these ones right here okay if there's not supposed to be if it's a non-resistant type it should be basically a perfect connection between here and here with no resistance okay so we're gonna connect to this and i should have three ohms around their give or take okay so i'm going to connect this here the negative to the negative side after we connected the multimeter and the positive to the positive sides of the primary windings whoops look at that alligator clip to stay on there probably easier if i took the nuts off we'll just leave them like that now i connected to those connections right there my multimeter is showing me infinite resistance in other words it's telling me internally inside this coil there's a break in the windings so that's why one day i went out to my tractor started to try to start my tractor it would not start no spark whatsoever obviously looking for fuel the fuel was there look for spark no spark but then we kind of honed me in on the on the coil wasn't 100 it was either that or the electronic ignition we tested the coil oh and that's the other thing you need to disconnect your wires off your coil here in order to test the circuit so you don't have any outside interference from your other wiring so you're going to do it independently of itself this this electrical system this uh setup right here so i have infinite number of ohms which is telling me there's a break in the wiring and obviously it's not going to work now it's possible not always some guys say my tractor runs great it gets hot it dies in that situation if you suspect the coil when it's hot and then when it dies like that test that system right away if you have you may have a break in a system that kind of temporarily goes away or because comes there and then when the coil comes down and things kind of relax get back together it works again the coil cools down it works again it's like an intermittent problem that's why it's important to test your coil don't just assume it's a coil you don't want to be a parts replacer yeah the parts are affordable and easy to do but it's best to test it versus just guessing well i guess the points are better oh it must be the condenser or pointing condenser or this and that test this is why you have a why it's good to have a multimeter so you could test your syst or system out prior to buying parts when i saw hooked that up and saw i didn't have three ohms of resistance or even four or five but infinite i knew i had a bad coil ordered a new coil put it into place bumped it started right up ran like a champ now the secondary windings are this one here this is where your coil wire plugs into your coil wire then goes from here and goes over to your distributor so to test this you're going to also do the same type of thing and the manufacturer will tell me tell you how much resistance should be there in between these um i'm not sure what it's supposed to be for this one but each manufacturer has a set setting what it should be you have to contact them find out for what the reading should be but i will show you this is the result i got you could take either one of these off but you're just taking the other one and you're going to test it right in here put it on that metal in there and you're going to see here let me show you first on my gauge we have no resistance when i go right directly to it however i take that lead touch it inside to the metal prong inside infinite resistance which is telling me there's still an internal break even on that circuit so that's my secondary circuit so that's showing me there's an issue there and there's an issue in my primary again i'm not getting any it's it's totally resistant there's a break in the wire internally this is how you test the coil don't just assume don't be a parts replacer i'm trying to teach you how to do this there are also other videos out there maybe more complicated i tried to break this down to the basics front mount distributors may be very similar in nature i'm going to talk to some guys and see if we can find that out so maybe we can talk about how to test them too but this is the side mount distributor again you got to know whether it's an internal resistor or it has an external resistor and then of course that's the other thing too you could test your resistor that you have by putting a lead just like this on either side of your resistor on your tractor and seeing if the if you have too much resistance there's a break in the resistor those are all little tests you can take i encourage you to buy a multimeter i can't remember what i paid for it i my dad has been always been a test light guy hey i got a test light i use the test light and they're great but they don't always tell you voltage they don't tell you resistance it's either bright dim or doesn't work i bought my dad a inexpensive multimeter i think for less than twenty dollars at harbor freight and it works and it does the job you don't have to go out by the cadillac like i said this is the best investment you can make if you do any of your own work or if you want to test your stuff rather than having to hire it out i hope you found this video interesting i hope you found value in this video if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you have any suggestions or comments just keep them respectful please be sure to post them below and if you want to be notified of future videos coming out hit the notification button and i also want to encourage you to subscribe to this channel do i know at all absolutely not but these are little tricks of the trade i picked up along the way that i wanted to share with you so thank you again for tuning in to another edition of the kilted homesteader

Channel: The Kilted Homesteader

Views: 44,034

Keywords: Ford, tractor, 8n, 9n, 2n, NAA, Jubilee, flathead, ignition, coil, test, 6 volt, 12 volt, volt, ohm, ohms, resistor, internal, external, multimeter, multi, meter, testing, DIY, Homestead, Homesteading, kilt, kilted, farm, farming, how to

Id: t-A-YJaKfQ0

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 16 2022