2.3L ('83-'97) Help identifying part!

[Ridered308]

Need help identifying these 2 capacitor looking things wired off of ignition coil. Truck running like shit and wiggled these and ran better. Found broken wire and corroded connections.
88 ranger 2.3

 

[Ridered308]

Nevermind guys sorry figured that out also my misfiring problem! Unplugged alternator and it runs awesome! Guessing bad alternator. Ignore this post

 

[RobbieD]

Good catch.

And it's good of you to follow up with the fix. It'll probably help somebody else down the road.

 

[pjtoledo]

glad you got it fixed. to answer your question those are capacitors, but in the automotive world they are called condensers.
they flatten out voltage spikes and electrical noise. modern automotive electronics do not like dirty electricity.

 

[scotts90ranger]

To expand on that they're pretty much to keep the ignition noise out of the radio signal...

And those blue speedy splice things are junk and horrible, not recommended, in this application they're probably fine but do not use if at all possible... also that other blue butt connector I would probably ditch as well and replace with a heat shrink type butt connector, they're cheap at Harbor Freight or amazon or other sources... I mean I have some of those speedy splices in my '90 that've been there forever but I'm not in the rust belt like you are and getting away from them is on "the list". I wouldn't lose sleep over the one butt connector but it isn't the best...

 

[Ridered308]

To expand on that they're pretty much to keep the ignition noise out of the radio signal...

And those blue speedy splice things are junk and horrible, not recommended, in this application they're probably fine but do not use if at all possible... also that other blue butt connector I would probably ditch as well and replace with a heat shrink type butt connector, they're cheap at Harbor Freight or amazon or other sources... I mean I have some of those speedy splices in my '90 that've been there forever but I'm not in the rust belt like you are and getting away from them is on "the list". I wouldn't lose sleep over the one butt connector but it isn't the best...

That's last on my list to fix originally I thought maybe it was the issue.
I'm hoping it's just the alternator maybe when I get higher voltage it's killing something else. I'm going to hook up a battery charger to it with alternator unplugged and see if it does the same thing. That should tell me if alternator is the culprit. But hey I'm just excited I got somewhere finally

 

[scotts90ranger]

One of the several ways alternators can fail is outputting AC voltage which would really make the DC system mad... one time when I lived close to work and only had my '90 the alternator went full field and maxxed out the voltage when running so I just unplugged it and ran for like 3 days until I could get to the junkyard to get another alternator (was also broke at the time)...

 

[Ridered308]

One of the several ways alternators can fail is outputting AC voltage which would really make the DC system mad... one time when I lived close to work and only had my '90 the alternator went full field and maxxed out the voltage when running so I just unplugged it and ran for like 3 days until I could get to the junkyard to get another alternator (was also broke at the time)...

I'll report back on this post if alternator does fix it. Thank you