I had swapped in a carb on my 89 and used the 85 manual distributor with a duraspark wiring harness off an old ford from the boneyard. It was doing great for about a week. Out of no where I lost my spark. Checked all my wiring against diagrams and its straight. Changed control box, and nothing. Changed coil with one I had laying around in the shop. Still nothing. Nothing left except to change the pick-up in the distributor. I did that and my damn new control box started rolling smoke. Figured wiring harness was shorted,so I just soldered new wire to connect it all. As soon as I touch the green wire from the control box to the tach side of the coil...smoke from the control box. What am I overlooking here?

 

this is a good one! have you checked the ballast resistor to make sure it is in the circuit because it is supposed to lower the voltage to the coil down some except at a start and if it is burned out, then the car won't start or run at all. don't really know where it is, but it is wired in line with the wire coming from the ignition switch out to the control, so look for it on the firewall is where they usually are. you can bypass it and see if the motor runs, and if it does, then you know the resistor is bad. if it still doesn't run, then I don't know what else to tell you to check as electrical stuff ain't my strong suit.
hope this helps you some.

 

Ill look for that and see if I can determine if the resister is bad. My coil is shooting out 12v on the tack side. Is it suppose to do that? Could I have gotten the wrong control box maybe or is the wiring all the same on the duraspark control boxes?

 

don't really know that much about the electronic ignitions, but I don't think the voltage on the negative side of the coil needs to be that high for the electronic pick-ups to function correctly. I do know the systems can send a voltage higher than 12 volts to the coil in order to get a bigger, hotter spark, this is how all of them work. what voltage are you getting going to the coil?