need some help

[grizz 454]

hey guys. i just recieved my distributor and coil for my 92 omc and i need help wiring it. to refresh memories someone put a car distributor hei in it and the wires have been cut and spliced to wire it up. i went ahead and bought a mallory distributor with points in it and bought me a coil too. does the wire they got to the battery side of hei distributor go to the + side of coil and what about the wire that comes out of the points to the - side? been 30 years since i fooled with points. after that i have to figure out where my esa wires go to and hook. thanks mark

 

[HT32BSX115]

Re: need some help

Howdy Mark,

The + side of the coil is for 12v power from the ign switch. The (-) side goes to the points connection in the distributor......pretty much a standard way to connect any points type distributor. Any other wire out of a points type distributor should be a ground connection. All the points do is switch the negative side of the coil to ground.

If I am not mistaken, you have a 1992 "King" (cone clutch) Cobra? Your "ESA" is not the ESA as used on the dog-clutch Cobras.
The later (SX) drives don't appear to use ignition (torque) interruption. Mercruiser Cone clutch drives don't either.



Yours was accomplished in the ECM and I have no idea what you would do for a cone clutch drive. It might be just a simple ignition interrupt.

OMC called it an "interrupter" So the switch might work going in series with the negative lead to the (-) on the coil.

My initial reaction is to just try it without any interrupt initially and see what happens......evidently OMC decided that their cone clutches needed torque interruption.

 

[grizz 454]

Re: need some help

thank you. i will give it a try!

 

[HT32BSX115]

Re: need some help

If you're going to try to use the switch as an "interrupter", you'll need to determine if it's either normally-closed or normally-open.

If it's normally-CLOSED, then you can connect it in series with the (+) lead on the coil. This way it'll briefly interrupt power to the coil and interrupt the ignition.

If it's normally open, then it was intended to short to "short" a pin on the ECM CPU to ground, telling the ECM to "stumble" the engine similar to what the Dog-clutch ESA was doing. (operating the ESA on a Dog-Clutch Cobra didn't just interrupt the ignition, it would actually cause the ignition to "pulse" causing the engine to "Lope") You will NOT be able to do this with a simple ON-OFF switch. It'll only open or close when you move the shifter from REV or FWD to Neutral....... Hopefully, only momentarily. If it it does it for too long, the engine will just quit. (right when you DO NOT want it to!!)

It's possible that you will not need to have any torque interruption at all. You'll just have to experiment....