1998 290 Woes...

drluv

Well, here goes again. Our 1998 290 club car will not start again. A while back I went through and replaced almost everything electrical and while it would run, it was hard to start. The starter went out around Christmas and I just finished replacing it only to find it won't fire at all. Actually the old starter developed a dead spot and if you turned the crank manually, it would sooner or later kick in. Anyway, since it was hard starting I replaced the plug, readjusted the valves and cranked it up just prior to pulling the starter to wait for a replacement.

Now what has been replaced? Coil, rev limiter, fuel pump, carburator, fuel lines/filters, plug, cleaned the tank, and probably more. I even had the dealer pull the head and clean the deposits off from the valves since there was a relatively heavy build up on them. The engine has good compression, i.e., around 150-160psi hot, but does use some oil so the plug has a tentency to get fouled every now and then. Right now it would appear that the spark is extremely weak, i.e., very hard to see even in the shade. I've primed the cylinder with gas and even used some starter fluid but so far nothing.

The one thing I seemed to have problems with when replacing all the parts was setting the gap between the coil and flywheel. I set it to spec (I forgot the actual number) and it wouldn't run. So after reading some forum posts I actually doubled the space and at least it would run. Now it won't run at all...

Anyone have any ideas as to what could be going on and/or what steps you would take to trouble shoot this very stock cart? I did try disconnecting the rev limiter just about an hour ago to make sure it was not shorting out the coil but again nothing... Where can I measure voltage, resistance, etc., to find the problem???

Thanks to everyone who comments here on the forum. You guys are great!

BGW

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drluv

One thing I can add to the above is that I had to replace the starter a third time within a year because the original one would no longer charge even after replacing the brushes. A friend of mine did the first replacement and I believe he connected the wire from the F1 terminal to the A1 terminal by mistake. It ran good for about 2-3 months and then failed. When I replaced it the third time, I simply used the same hookup since I had no schematic in front of me. Low and behold the starter failed again after around a month. What's funny is that it seemed to start and charge fine.

Anyway, this time to try and make sure everything was right, I have now wired F1 to A2 with A1 going to ground (A2 was going to ground before this). Now it won't start. I'm assuming that F1 to A2 is correct as shown on the schmatics although the original wire surely looks as though it was cut to length for the A1 terminal. Can anyone tell me what was happening to the starter when wired as described above and that I've actually got it wired correctly now?