1970 challenger wont start after sitting for a month

No spark to the plugs. Has Mopar electronic distributor with orange box and stock coil. Ran fine when parked a month ago or so. Ideas?

low on spark fluid?

Blinker fluid leaked onto the spark box thingie?

Did you turn on the key?

Nice. Guess this is the wrong place to ask for help.

What have you done to diagnose the problem before asking for help? The board helps those that help themselves.

Ya gotta remember we do a lot of joking around in the General Forum. Doesn't mean anything, just a fun place.

Just check all the connections for corrosion, and so on. And then test the units to see if the coil works, the ECU works, and so on. Normal diagnoses stuff.


It HAS been raining alot around here the past couple months so corrosion could be prominent. And Dec has been the wettest Dec. on record, if I remember correctly what they said the other day on the news.

Pull the yellow wire with tracer off of the "ign" terminal on the starter relay to disable the starter (no need to run the batt down). With a helper see if you have voltage at the coil positive terminal and the blue/yellow wire at the ECU pentastar connector in "run" and in "start". Likely you do but I would check (if not then clean the bulkhead). pull the coil wire (dist end) out and hold it 1/4" from ground and seperate the zigzag pull apart dist pickup connector & drag the male terminal on the body half across the metal intake surface & see if the coil wire sparks in "run" and in "crank". then take the wires/terminals off of the coil negative primary terminal (might just be one) and with a jumper with alligator clips connect one clip to that coil terminal (not to the wire you removed from the coil terminal) and drag the other alligator clip across the intake metal surface like before & see if the large coil wire sparks same as before in "run" and in "crank". Holler back. EDIT SWAG-its the orange box

Thanks, this is what I was looking for. I appreciate it. I will let you know what I find tomorrow.

Swap out the ballast resistor & see if that makes a difference. Happened on my old '71 Hemi Charger & we spent 2 weeks messing around with everything else before we discovered it was a $3.00 ballast!

I had a jeep I swapped a 318 into with mopar electronic ign. often after sitting for a week or so it had no spark. I just pulled one side of the ballast resister off and put it back on and wala spark. poor connection.

Put a Chevy alternator on it. Seems like a common thing around here....

I have voltage (10.8V) at the coil positive terminal and blue/yellow wire at the ECU. I get spark at the coil wire when I drag the zigzag connector and separate wire hooked to the negative terminal.

if the coil wire is sparking while dragging the male side of the body half of the connector across the intake with the key in "run" AND with the key being held to "start" then all is good in the 'hood ex the dist pickup ain't triggering the ECU for some reason. pickup coil continuity (grab your meter) or the mini screw for the dist upper flat plate come loose & let the plate/magnet slip away so the gap to the teeth is too great (want .008") or the intergear pin down below has shaeared (extremely unlikely). there could be poor contact between the metal terminals in the zigzag pull apart connector (pretty rare tho). if you have another dist (even a /6 one) plug it in to the zigzag connector & spin its shaft by hand & see if you get sparks. Short version: quick visual on the reluctor/magnet area for anything thats not right then grab your meter. EDIT I'm assuming the 10.8V is while cranking? I just had an issue on my ramcharger and after towed back home the coil would spark but would run bad. swapped the coil & all good. But yours is dead in the water. Keep us posted

I had another distributor and put it in. The spark was a lot more pronounced spinning the engine over with the coil wire 1/4 from a grounding surface. It started right up after putting the coil wire back on. Everything inside the distributor looks fine, air gap etc. I assume the pick up failed?

Thanks for all the help. Its refreshing considering how this post started.

Yeah on the dist if the teeth are in close proximity to the magnet there ain't much else that can go bad other than the pickup tho I would not have expected it to go belly up just from the sitting time. Might have happened right when it shut down last time. Yeah I was surprised with the contents also! and that is pretty much out of character for us as we are (pretty much) a bunch of Chrysler obsessed choir boys (with a few exceptions). The bad apples have vacated on their own or been run off by the moderators

Thanks again for the help.