Hello need help my 75 dart has a skip in the motor happens often and just for a split second. If the light are on you can see them blink head lights and dash lights. I have changed the ballast resister, the voltage regulator, and battery cable. I also checked the ground on the ignition box and cleaned it. My amp meter does not work could it be the problem. Any help would be great i,m running out of parts to change or am I you tell me. Thanks for the help I know the awnser is in one of your minds.

melam@nxs.net

Disconnect the battery and then remove the instrument cluster to check the connections on the back of the ammeter. There is power to the ammeter any time the battery is connected. (Maybe you can reach them from under the dash and not remove the instrument cluster??) The A-body cars through 1975 model year use a direct connected ammeter and ALL the current to and from the battery goes through the gauge. The ammeter should always work. There is nothing to go wrong with it ever unless someone had it apart and tampered with it and damaged it.

The 1976 model year A-body cars use a shunt type ammeter. Only a small portion of the battery current goes through the gage, the rest going through the shunt built in to the wire harness. Those suffer from poor connections to the gage and often do now work (like the one on my 76 Valiant)

cfield@ll.net

Thanks for your response I think it is likely that a short is hapening there also my cannon plug is not good at firewall causing starting problems so might be there. Thought someone else might have had this problem. Thanks for your help.

melam@nxs.net

One quick test is to "hot wire" the electronic ignition. Run a jump wire from the + battery to the ballist resistor, disconnect the harness connection. ( see the wiring diagram in the articles section)
Once the hot wire is hooked-up, immediatly start the car to see if the "skip" goes away, if it does, then the problem is a bad connection or short somewhere along the circuit from the battery, through the firewall, through the ignition switch, back out the firewall to the ballest.(It is ohm meter time)

If the skip remains while hot wired, the problem is in the distributor / ignition control or secondary circuit. (coil, dist., cap, wires, plugs etc.

This is a good way to "focus-in" on where the problem really is.
DD