1965 C10 Stepside working on her **England**

[[JP]]

Another update...
seeing as the coil I had had a dodgy connection, I ordered a new one.. a MSD Blaster 2... what a nice fancy name!

anyway...fitted the damn thing, ballast resistor and all, as I have points ignition, and no luck. the truck didnt want to start.



well.. put the old coil back on and it started.



then, with help from someone else the investigation started.
To cut a long story short, with the new coil I was only getting 4.8V at the coil, after the resistor ballast. not enough to start the truck when cold.

So I did a test.
Left the new coil in, with the ballast resistor, ran a wire from the coil to the battery, cranked it, it started, quickly took the jumper wire out and the truck kept running. showing now 8.2V at the coil

This is because in the original wiring diagram, there is a wire from starter solenoid to the coil to temporarily give the 12V, however mine doesnt have this wire and its a right pain to get to the starter motor.
what was the solution? wire in a magic switch.

basically wire from battery, to a switch and from there to the coil.
so I used a previously made hole on the dash and a pull switch. pull it out, gives the 12V to the coil, crank it to start, push it in to kill the 12V.

I'm calling it the "Cold morning magic switch




Now, the old coil said 12V, resistor needed. but there wasnt one in there! Obviously because it needed the full 12V wack to make it start so the previous owner left it like this.
I wonder if by not having that resistor is the reason for when I previously tried to accelerate a bit more the truck started to cough and died? Bear in mind I have only driven it once! Saturday I'll be driving again and see what else happens