1958 IH 350 UT, Spark very weak, will not start.

[kutzzbill]

I have a utility 350 IH 1958. It was running, and I shut it off. A day later it would not start. I traced it to no spark. I checked the resistor with a VOM, put a new coil on it and new points, condenser, rotor and plug wires. It went from no spark to a weak, yellow spark, and still will not fire up, doesn't even try. Even around the resistor, again not even one pop even with starting fluid.
I know the generator is weak, but it has run like that for 8 years. New battery, charged, and I hot wired around the harness to try and get it going, to see if the wiring is the issue, but it didn't chance anything.
I'm kind of running out of ideas, any thoughts?
Thanks,
Bill Kutz, Meta Missouri.

 

[DJ54]

Looks like you replaced everything but the distributor cap. Pull it off, and look inside at the lugs. They do have a tendency to get a build up on them due to ionization. Usually a gray/black in color. If that is the case, you can scrape it off with your knife, and be good to go, or unless you want to buy a new cap. I have a Super C I'v been scraping that buildup off, for 20 years or so.

Last summer, I'm assuming due to all of the moisture, the other Super C ran fine under no load, but under a slight pull it started missing. Pulled the cap, and the brass lugs had a green build up on them, and was pretty corroded. I scraped it, while in the field, and it too ran fine afterwards.

A couple weeks ago, I went to fire it up to do some frost seeding on the pasture, and it would not start. Found no spark at the plug, so pulled an inspected the cap. Looked fine, and no moisture inside. I pulled the cover off the points to check them, and stuck a screwdriver in there to move the points, to check for fire. When I did, I got an immediate KER-POW..!! One of the cylinders fired the fuel in one of the cylinder, with an open exhaust valve. Being it did that, I deduced it either fired across a carbon trace in the cap I could not see, or the cap had a crack I could not see, and spark jumped from the rotor pickup in the cap, to one of the lugs. I always have spare new caps, rotors, and points in the parts cabinet for hay making time, in case something like this happens. I replaced the cap, and it fired right up.