Hey Guys,
This is my first time posting though I've often lurked on threads on this site. Just a warning up front I'm kind of a noob at this.
Now for my problem. I have an 86' Ram D100 with the 318. Up to this point I was driving it pretty regularly to work once or twice a week. However, seemingly overnight it has stopped wanting to turn over. I looked at the most likely causes in my Haynes manual and thought I had found the problem with bad coil. So I replaced that and figured I might as well replace the distributor and cables and such while I was at it but after I got that all in and tried to crank it again I had no luck. but after trying to crank it about 3 times there was a pop and one of the wires right along the drivers side wall has fried. Seems I have a short somewhere. I looked into this and found it called a "Fuse Link". I'm not sure what it connects to I am going to be trying to track it down when I get a chance I'm just wondering if anyone else has some Idea where it may go so I don't have to tear all the wire harnesses apart. Or some way I can replace this Fuse Link thing.
Thanks, Sorry for the long post

 

what ignition system does it have or do you have any pictures of under the hood or what your having issues with?

 

Sorry I should have thrown some pictures in when I first posted. It looks to be a 20ga link if that helps.

This orange wire with the holse in it is the fusable link that seems to have blown out.

It all runs right there along the driverside fender above the main positive from the battery.
Thank you for the reply!

 

Also probably should have mentioned yesterday if I'm looking at it right in the Haynes manual it looks like this wire might go to the alternator. I am still going to try to trace it back this weekend if I get some time

 

that is a blown fusible link. unfortunately may have some bad news. pretty sure your truck may be equipped with the lean burn system. when it is working it is ok but when it is not working it usually costs more than it is worth to try fixing. might be better off to convert it to 4 pin ignition or doing the GM HEI swap.

 

After about 20min of internet research this seems pretty cheap and fairly easy. Is it really as good as it sounds?

 

the ignition switch is fairly easy and cheap. the more expensive part s swapping out stuff like the distributor or carb if needed. you can get it to run with the current distributor but without the computer controlling the timing it won't be happy so you will have to swap to a vacuum advance distributor. i also know the carb has some computer controlled parts but not sure how they will effect things if they are not hooked up.

 

If you're talking about pulling the lean burn and going with electronic ignition, I never keep it on a vehicle. The basic ignition is a reliable as they come. The lean burn is a colossal pain in the tuckus. You can source most of the parts from the bone yard r parts store. Chrysler used to offer conversion kits that were complete except for some wire through their Mopar Performance program.

 

I Thank you both for the advice. I will keep working on it whenever I get the chance and when I do finally get it figured out I will make a post with the conclusion so you all know the outcome and the future generations will have know what is up with this.

Thanks Again!

 

my 86 D150 is down for timing chain replacement but I have the lean burn system that’s fully functional and also a NOS computer as parts spare for my truck. If you do the conversion I’d be interested in buying your lean burn distributor and computer🤔 it could help you offset the cost of doing the conversion. Just tossing it out there.