92 dakota, no spark from the coil?

Question

I bought a dakota really cheap from a buddy and he said it ran when it was parked. Obviously when a vehicle sits not taken care of mice get everywhere. It is not to bad but the ignition switch wire was chewed off. It was missing the coil so I bought a new one hoping to have spark atleast to the distributer. No dice, not even spark out of the coil. Could it be bad coil or ignition/computer problems further up. Wondering where to go from here, all the wires look good. Test light at the plugin on the coil?

Truck is a 92 Dodge Dakota with the 5.2 EFI motor with an auto.

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

Electricity might as well be magic to you. Go to a garage from here.

? · Answer

You can test the coil you bought, sometimes (very rarely) you get a defective coil from an auto parts store.

Bad Ignition Coil –  Symptoms & Testing
No start
Black Smoke
Rich Mixture
Loss of Power
Limited Acceleration
Rough / Sluggish Running
Temperature Sensitive (May take time to cool Prior to Starting)

Bad Ignition Module – Symptoms & Testing
Power Loss
Rich Mixture
Engine Shaking
Engine Stuttering
Random Shut-down
Poor Fuel Economy
Shut-off After Warm Up
Strong Smell of Gasoline

If your coil checks out ok, you can start troubleshooting the problem.

Good to start with the battery.  Make sure the battery is fully charged and the terminals are clean INSIDE & OUT.  Tighten the cables to the battery after cleaning the battery posts.  Make sure they are tight enough that they can't be moved by hand.

From the battery, it's a process of elimination moving backwards from the spark plugs to the computer.

Check for spark at each step of the way and determine where the spark stops.

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92 dakota, no spark from the coil?

2 Answers