No spark at all, 85 maxima, coil?

The club for Nissan Maxima and Infiniti I30 / I35 owners, and the official home of Maxima Club of America!
User avatar
bobotech
Posts: 4886
Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:26 pm

Post

Okay, story time.

We have a 1985 Nissan maxima that was my wife's dad's from new.

Anyway, last winter, it was giving us problems where it wouldn't start at times and my kid just started driving a different car.

Fastforward to the summer. Once it warmed up, the car ran fine all summer long except that it was running rich occasionally. It has a new O2 sensor (non-bosch).

Its getting cold again now. My kid went out this evening to go somewhere and went to start the car, it started up and then just died.

He tried starting it up, and nothing.

He then pulled a plug and was getting no spark at all.

I then tried putting the spark plug directly on the coil wire and got no spark at all.

Coil problem? I'm going to check that the rotor is spinning when the boy gets home (make sure its not a busted timing belt or something).


User avatar
bobotech
Posts: 4886
Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:26 pm

Post

Rotor is turning (timing belt should be okay then).

Still no spark, replaced the coil, made no difference.

What next? Anyone?

User avatar
Beancooker
Posts: 12129
Joined: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:45 pm
Car: Current Car: 2019 Toyota Tacoma (modded)
Past cars: Way too many to list
Location: Cottonwood, AZ.

Post

Stupid question, but is the copper electrode on top of the rotor? Maybe that broke off?

User avatar
bobotech
Posts: 4886
Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:26 pm

Post

beancooker wrote:Stupid question, but is the copper electrode on top of the rotor? Maybe that broke off?
I looked and it looks fine, but we hooked up a spark plug directly to the coil wire bypassing the entire distributor assembly and still no spark.

Anything else?

User avatar
Beancooker
Posts: 12129
Joined: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:45 pm
Car: Current Car: 2019 Toyota Tacoma (modded)
Past cars: Way too many to list
Location: Cottonwood, AZ.

Post

Well, I would backtrac from the coil. The wire that supplies power to the coil, does it show a voltage reading?

User avatar
MinisterofDOOM
Moderator
Posts: 34350
Joined: Wed May 19, 2004 5:51 pm
Car: 1962 Corvair Monza
1961 Corvair Lakewood
1997 Pathfinder XE
2005 Lincoln LS8
Former:
1995 Q45t
1993 Maxima GXE
1995 Ranger XL 2.3
1984 Coupe DeVille
Location: The middle of nowhere.

Post

Bad wire(s), perhaps?

PeterJL
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 2:01 am
Car: 2000 Nissan Maxima ST

Post

When I poke around under the hood of my 2000 Nissan Maxima, it strikes me that the the Nissan A33 3-litre V6 engine is a nice piece of design work. The mix of high-tech and "ordinary" seems to hit the right balance between performance and utilitarian reliability. ... Except for important bit the end of the ignition system.

Most car manufacturers now use the same setup to fire a sparkplug, the thing is simplicity itself, a natural progression from the old Kettering ignition, but making the most of the reliability and speed of solid-state components. Instead of the spark being generated from a single coil driven by breaker points and sent to each plug with a distributor, the new systems use a single coil for each plug.The coils are smaller and sit on top of the plug. Similar to the old method, when you switch on the ignition key, 12v is supplied to the coil primary winding, which is grounded at the other end, so that a magnetic field is generated that "saturates" the more numerous secondary windings that surround the primary. When this current flow is interrupted, the field collapses, and the energy dumped into the secondary windings produces a high voltage pulse to fire the plug.In older systems, the breaker points carrying the current were pushed open by a cam, in the new ones, it's a switching transistor mounted in each individual coil housing and triggered by a precisely timed pulse from the engine management computer so as to ignite the fuel-air mix at a time that is optimum to the microsecond. Great stuff huh!

Well, so it should be. The first power switching transistors of 50 years ago were fragile things, but not so these days. If I browse the catalogs of electronic parts suppliers, I can spec a power transistor that can handle massive current at high voltages while heated nearly to incandescence. The term appears to be "ruggedising". In a harsh environment like an engine bay it's tough for any electronic component, but not for something like a simple good quality switching transistor, they're about as complicated as a hammer. Motorola used to make old metal-canned 2N3055s that you could darned-near cook with, and yet have lasted forever in all kinds of horrible industrial environments. This is the sort of proven-reliability component you find in aircraft.

How is it then that a company like Nissan cannot build or source an igniter coil unit that lasts.GM, Ford and Mitsubishi don't seem to suffer from the problem locally.The switching transistors in the coils in the old (?1980) Nissan EXA used to burn out one by one, and it appears that those in the Maxima twenty years later still do the same. They seems to take 3-5 years to go. Presumably the same can be expected for the 2007 Maxima. Here in Australia the part alone costs around $200, or 6 for $1200! Even the guys in the dealer service area are embarrassed when they quote the pricing.

Lets see, a Motorola 2N3055 sells for $1.50, a standard old fashioned automotive sports coil costs around $25.00. Hmm .. seems to be a bit of margin there in the pricing for an unreliable component that has the life expectancy of a hamster.

My problem is that I have a 30-odd thousand dollar car that I like, and bought new to serve for my retirement (Only 32000km so far), but can't trust enough to take on an interstate trip. I'd replace all 6 coils if I thought that new ones would be reliable, but it looks as though they were specced by a cost-accountant from Osaka rather than an engineer. What I'd like to do is cut one open and solder in a better quality transistor, maybe even a $5.00 one (wow!). Problem is, I can't find the one that's failing, the ECU only reports that the ignition failed, and it's intermittent. I have to wait until it fails completely.

Murphy's law suggests that the culprit is probably one of the back 3 buried under the inlet mainfold.

Best RegardsPeterJL

User avatar
Beancooker
Posts: 12129
Joined: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:45 pm
Car: Current Car: 2019 Toyota Tacoma (modded)
Past cars: Way too many to list
Location: Cottonwood, AZ.

Post

Well, that is interesting. So you are/were an electrical engineer?

User avatar
Beancooker
Posts: 12129
Joined: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:45 pm
Car: Current Car: 2019 Toyota Tacoma (modded)
Past cars: Way too many to list
Location: Cottonwood, AZ.

Post

So Bobo, what was the outcome?

User avatar
maxhopper
Posts: 5867
Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2003 10:43 am
Car: 02 Maxima SE 6spd
Location: Kentucky

Post

I'm pretty sure that there was a technical service bullitine issued here in the US regarding updated coil packs for the 5th Gen 3.0. The updated coil packs have a colored dot that differentiates it from the stock (outdated) coils.

User avatar
Beancooker
Posts: 12129
Joined: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:45 pm
Car: Current Car: 2019 Toyota Tacoma (modded)
Past cars: Way too many to list
Location: Cottonwood, AZ.

Post

Correct, the dot is a darkish grey. I think Bobotech's problem is with an '85 that has a coil, dist and rotor, etc.

User avatar
maxhopper
Posts: 5867
Joined: Mon Nov 10, 2003 10:43 am
Car: 02 Maxima SE 6spd
Location: Kentucky

Post

My reply was directed at PeterJL.

For bobotech: as the others have mentioned; plugs, wires, cap, rotor. If those things are eliminated, check the ignition circuit.

User avatar
bobotech
Posts: 4886
Joined: Sat Mar 06, 2004 10:26 pm

Post

maxhopper97 wrote:My reply was directed at PeterJL.

For bobotech: as the others have mentioned; plugs, wires, cap, rotor. If those things are eliminated, check the ignition circuit.
Well we are at this stage. It has a new coil. There is still no firing from the coilpack. That is before the plug/wire/cap/rotor. The shop tested the wires (they were new anyway) and it has new plugs.

We even changed the computer and that didn't make any difference.

The shop doesn't know what to do with it and nor do we.

So at this state, if we put the spark plug directly into the coil terminal and ground the plug and crank the engine, there is no spark at all.

Could the ignition key be an issue?

User avatar
Beancooker
Posts: 12129
Joined: Mon Jun 26, 2006 1:45 pm
Car: Current Car: 2019 Toyota Tacoma (modded)
Past cars: Way too many to list
Location: Cottonwood, AZ.

Post

Is there any voltage (signal) to the coil from the ignition? I'm assuming points and condensor are good?


Return to “Maxima Forum & I30 / I35 Forum”