75 C3 Randomly Died
Thread Starter
7th Gear
Joined: Jul 2018
Posts: 7
Likes: 0
75 C3 Randomly Died
Hi all,
Just got my first vette. The car was running fine, but when I took off from a stop light I randomly just lost power, and now it wont fire. I can hear fuel going into the carb, so I don't think that the fuel system is to blame. The starter is turning, so I don't think that is to blame either. This leads me to think it is the distributor. However, I replaced the cap and rotor, and it still wont fire. The new cap came with a coil in it, so I think I am clear there. I don't really know where to go from here. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
dean_ot
Just got my first vette. The car was running fine, but when I took off from a stop light I randomly just lost power, and now it wont fire. I can hear fuel going into the carb, so I don't think that the fuel system is to blame. The starter is turning, so I don't think that is to blame either. This leads me to think it is the distributor. However, I replaced the cap and rotor, and it still wont fire. The new cap came with a coil in it, so I think I am clear there. I don't really know where to go from here. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
dean_ot
Burning Brakes
Joined: Aug 2011
Posts: 983
Likes: 35
From: Redding California
If you have a long piece of electrical wire you can hook one end up to the positive of your coil and use a vice grip to clamp the other end to the positive on your battery. See if it fires up. If it does, work your way backwards from the coil through the electrical system with a trouble light and a multimeter to see where the loss of power occurred. There’s many things that could have gone wrong. But ya gotta start somewhere. Good luck and keep us posted.
Safety Car
Joined: Apr 2018
Posts: 4,592
Likes: 44
From: Eastpointe MI
Also, if you want to check for spark (it's not that uncommon to get a bad coil right out of the box) just pull one plug wire, pop an old plug on it, lay it against the block, and have someone crank it for you. If it sparks, that eliminates a lot of things. If not, first thing to check is the hot side of the coil with a voltmeter.
