Dead again

[jwinkler]

I posted my original problem on the CR forum here and thought I had it solved, but my little black car left me stranded again today, although it did start up and run long enough to get home. Figured I'd throw it out to a wider audience (and I know Don Scott, DV, and the rest of the CR contributors keep an eye out over here for folks in distress!).

What happens is that I seem to lose spark. The engine just dies, and it doesn't matter if I'm running at x% throttle, or clutch-in coasting. I have an all-Mallory ignition system (HyFire box, ProMaster coil, and Unilite dist), and recalled messages here about Unilite durability problems. My failure is intermittent (aren't they just the best kind?), and because of that, I tend to rule out a module failure (though I'd be glad to hear from anyone who has solved an intermittent failure by replacing the module). What I found that I thought had solved it was that the coil-side boot for the coil-to-dist wire was too long to get good "positive-click" connection with the coil. I solved that by taking 1/4" off the boot so that it clicked into place before bottoming out on the coil.

I would like to think I've got a failure somewhere other than with the Unilite, and since the coil-to-dist wire is the cheapest and longest wire on the car (with significantly more resistance, as well), I'm going to replace that next. Do coil wires fail? Today, I detached and reattached both ends of the wire, and got it started.

In other potentially related info, I had thought earlier failures might be heat-related, but the car was running at a very happy 190 when it died today. And while I was sitting on the side of the road, I was able to verify that I had plenty of fuel coming from the carb shooter.

From this point, I'll start checking for bad connections from the key all the way to the distributor.

Any help and opinions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

JLW