Resistance through Coils

[Poprock]

My SG quit 1.5 miles from home. This was shortly after a 500 mile weekend that included carrying double for 150 miles. I'm grateful for small favors. It was running OK for a cold engine. At a stop sign the engine died and will not restart. I headed for the garage with Hansen's excellent instructions, expecting a dreaded pickup wire break. No such luck. Checked solder joints on the TCI. They had already been worked on, but nothing looked broken. Started checking resistances. At the coil wires (Orange to Red/White, or Gray to Red/White) no resistance. Same condition at the TCI plug. Resistance across plug caps 150+ Ohms, both coils.
Pulling the big plug off the TCI, there is continuity between all the clips but one. Any clues? And thank you very much.

[skids]

The plug caps should be between 3k ohms and 5Kohms I think (3000 to 5000 ohms). I wonder if you have a bad battery in your multimeter? It doesn't seem like everything can go bad all at once like that. If you pull plug caps off of the plugs to test the caps, wires, high volt coil, test from cap-to-cap, it should be something like 15,000 + 2 X 5000 ohms = 25000 ohms. I have to adjust my digital meter to the 200 Kohm range to read it.

[TopCatGr58]

Hey Poprock,

I hate to ask it but you did unplug the connectors from the ign. coils first? If you are truly getting no resistance, then that's not good! Should be ~1.5 ohms. Are you sure you have your multimeter set to the right scale? Does your machine still have the ballast resistor? IF it was removed or bypassed for some reason, that could FRY your coils?

Yes, I would think it rare for both to go bad at the same time!
T.C.

[Poprock]

Before what? I checked the resistance between the wires after disconnecting from the leads from the TCI. No resistance at all. Then I plugged it back together, checked from the TCI plug, same story.
Good chance I'm not reading the meter properly. It's cold and dark now, so I'll check it again in the daylight.

[Poprock]

Close to a worst case scenerio

Never mind. I found the problem. Ignition is all good. The two shoulder bolts on the exhaust cam have fallen off. Exhaust cam does not rotate. How much trouble has this caused?

[John]

How much trouble?

More than you were hoping, I'm afraid. If any exhaust valves are open wide, there may have been contact with a piston.

[Poprock]

You wouldn't believe my luck this week. I'm going to try to replace the shoulder bolts and see what happens (d). Since one has been missing longer than the final one, having one or more in the crank case doesn't seem to matter. There may well be bent valves though, because this is the final thing I have checked.

[John]

Yeah, I'd believe it.

have seen my post titled *%&), #!(*, and %*#! ?

Fortunatly, you aren't too far from Andreas Weiss. He should have some parts available.

[Poprock]

Roger that, John. Thanks for your response. I'm sorry I couldn't make any of those Texsive rallies when I lived in that part of the world and meet all of you folks.