Ignition help needed...please?

[R J Young]

Ok, I have an 85 sunsport skier with a PCM 351. I can't get it to start unless I put a jumper wire from a known hot source to the + side of the coil? I then can not get it stop with the ignition (key), so I pull my jumper wire and it will stop? I am not good with this kind of thing, where should I start to get this right? When I got the boat the distributor was replaced with electric and the resistor had been bypassed? It ran fine last year? Any thoughts or ideas would greatly be appreciated!

[CornRickey]

Your coil or wiring harness has generated to much resistance not allowing enough volts to your distributor to trigger. Take your jumper wire and connect it to the empty small post on your starter solenoid. This will give your coil 12 volts while cranking then use your original circuit when the starter is disengaged. I would replace the coil with the proper resistance replacement is this set up works.

[R J Young]

Ok, I will try that tomorrow! So you say if that works my coil is creating a void in the current (volts), and to replace the coil because it is bad? I thought if the coil was bad, it wouldn't make any kind of connection with the dist? As I said before I am no expert and I am just thinking out loud? If the coil needs to be replaced, is that something I can get locally at a parts house? Oh and if the resistor is bypassed, does that mean I have or need a coil with an internal resistor? Thank you so much for taking the time to reply, as you can see I need all the help I can get...

[CornRickey]

I'm no expert either. I had the same symptoms on my SN. I had resistance in my old wiring harness. That and the ballist resister was to much for the ignition. It needed 7 volts. I bought a new ballist resistor, no change. I then bought another coil for a ballist visitor but they have different resistance so I gave up and bought the PCM coil that was labeled for the Pertronix ignition.