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German distributor wiring/no spark

1K views 8 replies 3 participants last post by  jes225 
#1 ·
I know, it's not a dodge, but there's a lot of old school dizzy guys here who might recognize this.

This is on a 1984 volkswagen 1.8L 8 valve. I can not for the life of me figure out the wiring for this thing. I've tried several setups, main one being:

switched 12v-->positive side of coil-->positive wire (red) of dizzy
Negative wire on dizzy-->negative post of coil-->negative post of battery
Middle wire (green) on dizzy is switched 12v

And then random configurations I've found on the internet for different vw engines, not of which worked.
Pay no attention to the wire colors in my pictures, I used what I had available.






Any ideas are welcome!
 
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#2 ·
Can you give the guys without knowledge of VW's what kind of dizzy that is? Point's electronic? Does it have an external control box? How about a pic of the inside? Had a gf that had a Golf diesel that you would have to feed it diesel because air would get in the fuel lines. That's about the only time i worked on VW.
 
#3 ·
I have no idea what "kind" it is lol. I think the car it orginially came out of had an "ignition control module" as it was a very primitive fuel injection system. I've carb'd it, and just need the damn distributor to send spark lol.

Similar distributor. Mine has the 3 wire plug, I just had to get rid of the plastic so I could wire it to the buggy.

http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/d...k=Search_02780_1285411_211&pt=02780&ppt=C0334

Similar coil:

http://www.oreillyauto.com/site/c/d...k=Search_02767_1285411_211&pt=02767&ppt=C2377
 
#4 ·
Ok, I learned a lot about this thing today. The distributor is electronic. Has a hall sender in it, that signals the coil when to fire.

Testing all the wires, the + wire as 12v, but the negative and middle green wires also have 12 volts to them, all the time.

And bench testing the coil, 12v to positive post, and grounding out the negative post, doesn't produce a spark out of the coil wire. Am I doing something wrong here? I have a feeling that whatever I'm missing is so stupid, I'll slap myself once it's figured out.
 
#5 ·
I'm assuming there is just the pickup coil in the dizzy and nothing else(couldn't see in the link) so you wont get a spark without some kind of control unit. The three wires on it are positive power, ground and return signal. Our trucks use a 5 volt supply voltage so who knows what VW did.
 
#6 ·
Yeah, a vw forum actually helped me out today. There was an ignition control module in the car this engine came out of. I need it and the harness. I'm just gonna swap out to an old school points dizzy, or see if an air cooled hei unit will swap.
 
#7 ·
Just as a follow up, in case anyone ever gets into older vw stuff for whatever reason, the first gen watercooled distributor does not swap with an air cooled distributor. Also, the vw ICM is absolutely required, the GM ones will not work with the german hall effect sensor for some reason.
 
#8 ·
My brother owns a 74 vw bug that he built from the ground up from scratch with a 1300cc engine that they only made for one year in 1966 oh yeah its aircooled but these things can be pretty fun I've rode along with him in sand deep mud and basically all over the back woods he drives the thing like a 4x4 drive truck I've never seen it get stuck and if it did it's so light that we could probably just get 3 or 4 people and push or pull it out. They don't have much horsepower about 60hp but have alot of torque for such a small engine it makes Jeep owners pissed off I've seen a newer EFI jeep lifted 4x4 get stuck going up a steep sand bank at a running start make it half way up and sink and be me and my brother be in his old carbureted 60 hp engine go from a dead stop at the same spot and easily crawl all the way up to the top without slipping stopping or back sliding all in 1st gear at around about 2k rpm man we got out to see if we could help they were pissed and started talking crap on us so we just left and to rub it in we did the same thing again only this time stopped halfway up the same steep grade and crawled up it again from halfway up from a dead stop I would defiantly put some work into your VW they are alot of fun
 
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