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Hello from the other side of the pond. I´m Jose Rubio from Spain. It´s been quite a while since my last port on the forum.

I´ve a quite disturbing issue with my M-38. It has 24v original electrics, and lately it is destroying the ignition coil. And I mean destroying like literally blowing them. They look burned to a point were they open up and liberate some oilish looking liquid.

Any clue on what is going on and how to attack the problem?

Thanks in advance!

Jose

The long time MV restorer who recently restored my M38A1 has said there are a lot of inferior cheap cooks out there. So there is the possibility that your vehicle may not be to blame.
Buy your next unit from a different source.

Mine has recently gone from being easy to start to darn near impossible.
It turns over but you soon smell a bit of raw fuel.
If you let it sit, that sometimes helps.

The imported China built replacement coils have had that easily overheating problem for some time. Try locating an Autolite or Prestolite built coil. Also the cooling air line that connects to the distributor in two places is a very needed cooling air source for these coils especially during summer weather. One line comes from the air cleaner and the other goes around to the left side of the engine to a vacuum source.

Good Evening Wes:

I have a fairly original late production M-38. However it is missing the distributor cooling lines that you mentioned in this post. When I originally restored the jeep I replaced the wipers with electric ones and replaced the original fuel/vacuum pump with a new MD/2A style fuel pump as the original pump had failed. The ports on the distributor are currently open to the atmosphere. We do drive our rigs on a regular basis, especially in the summer time. Given the shortage of good coils and reading your post on cooling, it probably makes sense to hook the cooling lines back up again. But since the vacuum system is not complete, I may have to be a bit creative, which raises the question of the direction of the airflow through the distributor.

Does the source of fresh air come from the air cleaner connection and the air cleaner itself to the distributor and then exits to the wiper motor feed junction block? If so, then then the Air Cleaner to distributor is a simple no-brainer. Since it no longer has a vacuum pump, can the exhaust line be run and connected to the intake manifold. It currently has a plugged 1/8" pipe port in the intake manifold.

If that is not the flow, let me know. I will attempt to post some pictures of the jeep.



Many thanks.

Here are a couple of more pics. Enjoy!

Regards,

Walter

[image]https://www.willysmjeeps.com/app.php/ga ... 492/medium[/image]

Note line "Q" in the lower illustration. That is fresh air being sucked into the distributor body by intake manifold vacuum which is boosted to an even higher flow rate with the added punch of the CORRECT dual vacuum/fuel pump. Using manifold vacuum alone as your suction source may or may not be adequate depending on the amount of suction available to cool the coil. This discussion seems to be related to the one I was just in on facebook. If so a proper ID would help avoid any confusion. If this is the same discussion then my previous suggestion in that discussion takes precedence.

Good Evening Wes:

Many thanks for the response. I will check it out and see what I can do to make it work, one way or the other. Also, please be advised it wasn't me on facebook. I believe that I may still have a very old account but was turned off by the way you had to keep up with it. Frankly I dont have the time. I tried to delete the account, but I am not sure it went through.

Thanks again.

Regards,

Walter

If your vacuum motor conditions are unknown to you you may want to try a little bit of lubrication to the diaphragms. The common fluid to use id GM automatic tranny fluid.