Help! My cobra shuts itself off?

[undy]

Originally Posted by Cobrabill

Lemme tell ya a story......the car would shut off going down the road.Just like you turned the key off.But would light back up as soon as you hit the key.(Que the sound of scratching my head).One night on the way to a cruise night,it shut off and this time it took a minute or two for it to re-start.This should have been a clue for me to turn my happy ass around and go back home.But,oh,no-not me.I had a cruise night to go to.

So the cruise night is ending.I hit the key and it just cranks and cranks and cranks.I wait 'till everyone else leaves and call the flat bed.

The next day,i'm trouble shooting.I have just about spare everything,but nothing fixes it.Now que the sound of me dragging a garden rake across my head.Monday morning i call MSD.They tell me that the likely culprit is a cracked magnet that worked it's way into two pieces over time.When i took the two screws out the lower magnet jumps into two seperate pieces.AHA!So i change it.And it lights back up pronto.No problems since.

Later that year,i talked to a tech at the track and he said that it was likely that a piece of something got on the magnet and acted as a "fulcrum" when the magnet was secured in the distributor base.

Aren't the Ford factory distributors similiar?

MSD Distributor magnetic pickup failure is probably the most common MSD box/MSD distributor system problem there is. It's also not just a "cracked magnet" issue either. They often fail with no visible signs.

MSD has a great tech section on their web site. The simple test for the magnetic pickup is ... disconnect the 2 magnetic pickup leads from the distributor. Read the ohm value between the 2 leads. The reading should be between 400 and 1000 ohms, simple as that.

They also describe in detail how to easily and systematically go through your "MSD" system and trouble-shoot the problem.

BTW ... I had the same failure, having very smilar symptoms

[jerry w]

Thanks for the info on the distributor, I can't get to it until this weekend, but that will be the first place I look. The description that Cobrabill gave is identical to mine.

Thanks eveyone!