Att'n Allan in NE

If it wasn't already bad, I suspect doing those things will lead to "letting the smoke out of it"!

A DUMB question, I'm sure, but is the distributor shaft turning as the engine cranks?

Is the magnet wheel intact, and pushed down over the point cam, lined up with the Ignitor, and is the air gap correct?

Have you checked, per my previous post, whether it is well grounded?

Don't be playin' around with the thing. Make sure it is hooked up correctly and grounded good as stated earlier and have it all put back together.

Then, and only then put the juice to 'er.

You already know the tractor runs good with the points so the only other thing left stopping the tractor from running is that little pickup thingy.

I think I fried mine when I hit the starter button when the dude was hangin' free off the distributor. They just can't stand that.

Allan

That can be a symptom of a shorted module.

Also, have you been monitoring the primary voltage to the coil, to be sure it is holding up, even while cranking?

And, one MORE thing... the Ignitor module needs to be grounded. It bolts to the breaker plate, then the breaker plate has to be making good contact with the distributor body (sometimes, there's a ground jumper wire), and the distributor body must be making clean metal-to-metal contact with the engine block. Poor ground to the Ignitor mounting base = weak or NO spark.

All I can do is relate my experience with ya, which was just about the same deal as you had.

Bottom line is that the pickup is history. It's shot. Take this to the bank, it is no good. That is exactly how mine acted.

That little gizzmo is very sensitive to the correct polarity, the correct voltage and also, you must have very good grounding on your tractor.

Allan

I run a straight 12 volts on mine and threw that resistor in the weeds. Since the replacement pickup was installed, no problems to date.

Allan

You must have a coil with a fair amount of primary resistance, or a Pertronix IgnitorII unit.

The original Ignitor will only tolerate a coil with a fair amount of resistance (I can't remember the exact figure), and a coil with less resistance will cause all the smoke to be let out of the $$$$ module. Don't ask how I know this!

The Ignitor II is smart enough to work with low primary resistance coils, making for a HOT spark, without losing all it's smoke!

What REALLY ticked me off, though, was a Ignitor II unit for a special-order application (Ford grain truck that originally had factory EI) that "went south" about the second day into harvest.

All was done according to the book... the unit was used with a new approved coil. Apparently, the unit was "new defective", but that didn't make the customer very happy, or myself, for that matter, when we had to rig up another ignition system to get him through harvest!

(The wiring for the truck's original equipment electronic ignition system was destroyed in a cab fire, and we put in just the basic wiring, and special-ordered the IgnitorII to replace the complicated Ford system that had been "toasted".)