8n no spark (among other problems!)

Hello everyone,

I have a 1948 8n front mount dist 12 volt conversion that will not start. I guess I will start from the beginning. Ive had the tractor for 3 years now and for some reason decided to pressure wash it before I changed the oil and did my maintenance on it. I thought I was careful enough not to get anything important wet but I guess I wasnt. Needless to say I towed it to the garage and changed the sparkies, wires, rotor, dist, condenser, and points. I decided to do a 12v conversion and bought a conversion kit on one of the 8n sites. I downloaded one of the single wire 12v conversion diagrams off of one of the 8n sites and went to town. I also had to change the ignition switch bc I broke the key off inside it while taking off the gas tank. I replaced it with a push/pull button (i hope that was ok)

Once everything was finished and with a few tweaks it was running fine for about 40min. I turned it off to check the fluids and when I started it back up it ran for about a min and then backfired and would not start. Once again I towed to garage and started checking things out. Occasionally it would start but would only run at low throttle for about 2 min and then die. If I tried to increase the throttle it would sputter out and die. If it would allow me to run at full throttle it would only do so for about 5 min and then shut off.

I thought it might be a fuel problem so I check ed the 3 screens and rebuilt the carb. After doing all this my once good spark resulted into no spark.

This is what Ive tried over the past month of looking over just about every 8n forum I could find that had similar issues.
-dollar bill on the points
-triple check gap on points to .015 (they are opening and closing)
-my sparkies are gapped at .25
-I am getting spark to the coil
- I had to replace the braided ground wire bc it was too small for the 12v battery and broke when i tried to open her up to fit. I replaced it with a solid 12v core wire from a auto parts store. ( I m not sure of gauge and hope that this was ok.)
--Initially, I was using a new 6v coil with an additional ballast resistor inline to the coil but after reading that some coils were bad out of box I got frustrated and went out and bought the 12v. (do I keep the additional ballast resistor inline now with the 12v coil? Ive tried it both ways and nothing changed BUT ive read conflicting answers.
- I just tried to bypass the ignition switch by going straight from the battery to coil and had some occasional spark but not enough to start..
I think I am running out of room so Ill shut up and let some professionals give me some advice!! lol... thanks in advance for your help!

First off you would be better off to post this in the N forum down below.
That said I would install your old condenser and try that common now days for a new one to be bad right out of the box. As for the coil an ballast resister if a 12 volt coil is is said to keep the factory resister but not the add on one.

I would put in another condenser and see what happens first. I had a allis G we were driving around and it acted like it ran out of gas, had gas in tank so spent the next 3 hours cleaning carb, checking points and rechecking everything and still no go. A friend came over gave his 2cents worth and just to see, put an old condenser in and the potlicker started up and ran fine. Just something to try.

Thanks for the response guys...ill pick one up today after work

If the condencer doesn't fix it, you might want to check the point gap. It's possible that it might have slipped closed. Just my thoughts, Keith