I had something similar happen recently on my 72. On this car a previous owner had the main power feed from the battery to the ignition switch heat up and melt one of the plastic connectors under the dash. The solution was to splice around that connection. I started to have weird symptoms(no power to ignition switch but power to certain accessories)and thought it was the ignition switch. I took that apart and cleaned it. Seemed to be ok. Then one morning on start up there was an ugly plastic burning smell.And then the car quit.Took the bulkhead connections off and one of the connections had burnt almost completely away. So I bypassed the bulkhead connector for this particular wire. Long and short of it is I would recommend pulling the bulkhead connectors off and cleaning/inspecting them and reinstalling with some electrical grease. I would do that also with the fusible link off the battery and the two links that feed through the bulkhead connector.Also I would check the two plastic connectors that the ignition switch wires pass through under the steering column area. The reason I believe for my problems is/was possible poor connections from the factory aggravated by time(dirt and corrosion) which will cause heat build up which will eventually cause failure. I work as an avionics on large jets and see these problems(dirt and corrosion) on electrical connections fairly regularly. On this car the starter would engage and the engine would fire but once the start position was released the engine died. Problem being that in start position the coil is getting full 12 volts from different feed. When in run position coil feed is through different wire that routes through ballast resistor(apparently extending coil life). This wire was the one that had the problem. Check your ballast resistor also. This would affect running but not the no power problem.
Robin Giesbrecht 72 Imperial
From: Kenyon Wills <imperialist1960@xxxxxxxxx> Reply-To: mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To: IML <mailing-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: IML: Ignition failure Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 08:29:28 -0800 (PST)
I was driving the 72 last night and experienced something new and before I go hunting wanted to ask if anyone has a suggestion on this.
Symptom: Car runs fine for 20 miles.
Starts to hiccup suddenly and repeatedly while in motion on the freeway as if losing spark, fuel seems fine.
Hiccup progresses and car dies running horribly rough, getting little spark intermittently on different cylinders.
Does not want to start in park, so I go to neutral. restarts and seems to catch and die - detonation in only a few cylinders. Backfired up carb two seperate times out of 20 attempts.
Starter solenoid/starter refuses to respond to key - no noise but radio and other electrics work, so power present/battery strong.
Wait 2 minutes and it does engage then goes dead on retry, with intervals between response/dead progressively longer. Car now won't respond at all.
This feels an awful lot like a loose connection/heat sort of thing. I did an engine swap very few miles ago. Maybe I left something loose and it's worked its way off and was arcing or something?
I plan to start my tour at the starter motor/solenoid connections. Anything else worth looking at? I do not suspect the column switch at this time - jiggling it made no difference and it feels tight.
Kenyon Wills
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