Ok I have not gone out to the car to work on it yet outside of visual. To give you an understanding let me tell you the short story.

1980 5speed bone stock. I buy it and it took a minute to crank it but then it fired up. Ran beautiful! Outside of running out of gas before gas station. Before I head to gas station I stop at work along way “oreilys auto parts” Come back out and the car will not start. I check for spark no spark. Everything OHMd out fine. I beat on the coils and the ignition module and I got spark back. So I order a ignition control module and 1 coil. I take car to gas station where I proceed to run out of gas. I got gas at this time the car has no spark again no matter what I do. So I get gas and wait for my parts to come in. Upon arrive I unexpectedly noticed that the 125$ my cost ignition control module is 2 parts DOHH! I figure oh well I will replace the L system and get me home. Replace the module and coil for L at 8pm at night in windixy parking lot and I have spark! Not only on L but on T too now! Yippy I drive right to gas station to top off and head home.

A week has now past. It seems the starter gear is prolly striping out or the starting is dieing. Because it will grind when you crank it like if you tried to crank it while running. But if you put car in gear and rock it hard it will crank normal. I am out of town and currently rebuilding my girl friends FC so she is barrowing my SA. She calls me and says car is at publix b/c it will only do the grinding thing when you try and start it. I said oh well I will be back in 3 days its Christmas EVE you wont be driving anymore. I will fix it then.

I return to get it the car is grinding I rock it its fine now “she said she rocked for 30min WEMON” But the car won’t start. Hmm I listen I don’t hear the pump pumping. I have her crank it while I stare down the carb, no fuel, HMMmmmm. I check for spark no spark. Now I am a little stumped. What on these cars will cause both of these items to malfunction while the rest of the electronics is just fine? Fusible link? What relay is that little brown fusible link on the strut tower? Should I just rewire it to a fuse block?

Well I will go outside with a light and do a tune up and check some more while I wait for a replay.

 

Are you getting power to the coils? Need to identify that first. The leading coil gets power any time the key is on. (The trailing coil is switched for emissions purposes, the trailing is only on sometimes)

As I remember, at least on my '80, the fuel pump should be on any time the key is on, regardless if the engine is running or not. This was addressed in later cars, with the upshot that if you had no ignition, you had no fuel pump either.

 

I will go buy a test light since I am in the city and my house and shop is 55mils and 1hr away each direction. So I am limited on barrowed tools and my charge acount at oreilys.

 

Ok. There is no power to eaither coil. Tere is power to all side of the fuseable link box. There is power to the alt and alt silinoid. All idiots lights come on and car cranks. There is still no fuel and the pump is not turning on. All tests have been done with the key in ON position.

So.... Is there a fuse that controlls all this? I am thinking faulting ignition switch.

 

There is also no power comeing out of any connector of the ignition control modules. Two connector pins on each module.

 

I figured it out. I cant balive mazda wired the car like this oh well. It was a blown fuse hair line crack under the dash panel. It was the lower most fuse towrds fire wall. There is a aftermarket cruis control unit in the car and it grabs power via a C clip onto this fuse. Perhaps it got kicked and shorted. Anyhow a jumper wire later and bam evrything turned on test light on ignition poped on and so on. The ignition switch was also faulty. I took it apart and fixed that.