ford 961 ignition problems

[ford 961 mark]

Having trouble with my Ford 961 starting, I pulled the coil wire to check for spark and it fired up and ran great, then tried to put coil wire back in coil and it started to miss fire and stalled. does anyone have a clue.
 

[old]

Check your points they are either getting very bad or gaped wrong or some such thing. Points should be set at 0.025. Book says 0.024-0.026. When the coil wire is pull out say a 1/4-1/2 inch that caused the coil to build up high volts so you have a hotter spark so you have the common weak spark type problem which can be caused by many things like a cracked cap a rotor that is getting bad etc etc
 

[ford 961 mark]

My distributor is brand new but Idid not check the point gap. could it also be a bad wire?
 

[old]

Well if you have the wrong type of plug wires yes they could cause it. On any tractor you need the true copper wire plug wires not the ones made for cars or truck since the ones made from cars/trucks are carbon wires and they do not hold up well to what a tractor has to put up with
 

[kly]

I don't know what type of problem you are having. it could be a bad coil. Wires need to be either copper or stainless wire. Copper works best. That is what the tractors were designed to use. Modern wire sets do not work well with old tractors.
 

[Jon Hagen]

Sounds like you have badly fouled sparkplugs.
Pulling the coil wire partly out makes the coil build more voltage to fire through the increased gap of the partly pulled coil wire. This higher voltage is able to fire through the plug fouling.
Clean and regap or replace the sparkplugs.

It's an effective trick to remove the plug wire on a misfiring cylinder with a fouled plug, hold the wire a fraction of an inch from the plug terminal so the spark jumps the gap. This will often get the fouled plug firing so combustion heat can burn off the fouling.
 

[ford 961 mark]

this tractor has become a frutration I blew a head gasket, I had head milled and rebuilt, installed new rod bearings and rings compression is 150 in all cylinders ,I have new plugs copper core wires and distributor But I know its something simple.
 

[Jon Hagen]

New plugs can still be fouled plugs, especially on starting a fresh engine. Try another set.
 

[souNdguy]

pulling the coil wire a bit opens the gap and makes for more KV

can fire thru a fouled plug.. or offset weak spark otherwise.

check er out.