2.3L ('02-'11) Ignition Coil Blues

[facemaze]

2001 2.3l RWD DOHC

I recently swapped out my plugs, wires and coil. The new coil was a motocraft. The truck ran horribly, so i reinstalled my original NGK, The truck was running perfectly, so I got a new NGK coil and installed it. The truck wouldn't even turnover or it would go to try and make kind of a stalling noise. So I inspected again and noticed the sending unit wasnt clipping in place( its wings finally broke off) and the wires appeared exposed so I replaced the sending unit. To do a test run i just twisted the correct wires together and taped them off then tried with both coils and it seemed like it would try and turnover then do its stalling thing (its not a stall it just sounds like a mini one)

I am at a total loss as to what to do.

Do the wires definitely need to be soldered to work?

Is there a way to test the things with a volt meter? The coil? Sending Unit?

How can I make sure it's getting spark or confirm it?

Thank you in advance.

 

[corerftech]

Unsure of the sending unit you speak of.
As for the coil, should have far less than one ohm on primary and about 6-12k ohms on the secondary.
I have one that read over 12.5k and it’s secondary is toast and needed to be replaced . I
I recently had to test both of my quad tower coils and behold (1990) one coil secondary was at 14k. I tested a JY coil from a big car and used it as a reference, about 10k across each pair of towers and very symmetrical. My failed one was around 9k and then then 14k.
Replaced it and it made a substantial difference.

If your connections are messed up feeding the coil, we’ll the coil pulls several amps when field charges. A crappy twisted wire connection will definitely give you far less than 12v as an input at 3 amps or so. You might only be firing the coil with 4/5volt from the bad connection resistance.
Just use a DVM or VOM and check the primary and secondary for DC resistances.
There are many guides to specific coil measurements depending on your coil but all of them have pretty much a dead short for primary and 10k on secondary.