Just driving along, and crested a big hill where the guy in front of me would not get a run for the hill so I had to upshift into second and creep up the hill so I level out, hit third cruise for a few seconds, then hiccup........dead right there.
Luckily I crested the hill and had a side road with a nice shoulder to pull off to.

I had fuel going to the carb, but no spark.
Check this, check that, got no power on the points side of the coil.

Put a new set of points and condenser on for kicks, still nothing.

Checked for continuity in the wire from the points to the coil-open circuit.

Found the wire had a crappy crimp connector someone crimped on there in the past so i fixed it, and now had spark, but I had so much fuel washed down into the cyllinders I had to pull, clean the plugs and pour some oil down each hole to pump up the compression.

Bingo, fired up, but ran really rough and blew tons of smoke( to be expected), but it never quite smoothed out so I adjusted the points about a million times to get it running as smooth as possible but it never did smooth out but I was able to drive it home with a misfire here and there and pretty rough timing at idle.

Man, those three on the tree /6's are a bear to keep running while start/stopping at redlights when it won't hold an idle for crap.

Any ideas?


I changed the oil today since I dumped enough raw fuel into the crankcase trying to crank the car a billion times,. but it still runs like crap.

Yes, I replaced the cap and rotor too and I checked my firing order again against the manual.

I'm wondering now if I did not have a timing issue or a carb issue from the beginning, but caused the wire to separate at the points while testing things.

Hmm, I guess I gotta find a timing light for starters, then if that's okay, I may rebuild my leaky carb finally.

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Just because you are not "paranoid" doesn't mean they aren't coming for you.

Are you sure your plugs are dry enough? If they were that wet they can be a bear to get dry enough to work. When they don’t work they quickly get wet again.

Some say replacing them is the only way to fix them but I’m always afraid of wetting a new set before I've fixed the original problem. I wash them with lacquer thinner and blow them with compressed air if possible. All of the gas and oil has to be completely gone.

Danny

I gunned the plugs pretty good with brake kleen and wire brushed them too for added contact, but they were in pretty good shape regardless other than being wet.

I am going to check my timing because it seems like the motor sounds labored when cranking and I can hear a possible slacked chain noise ( whirring) when I first flog the throttle at lower rpm's.

I am also not ruling out junk in the carb since my see through filter looked like it had some dark fuel in it when I first broke down.

I blew the filter out first thing, now my fuel looks really clean in the filter so I may have stirred up some sediment going up that big hill before it died.

I changed the oil in it yesterday after work and it still runs crappy and the starting sounds labored and I have a whirring sound at lower rpm like possible timing chain slack.

So, I guess I have a couple issues to work out such as the carb, and the timing.

I will make sure my timing is adressed and take it from there.

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Just because you are not "paranoid" doesn't mean they aren't coming for you.

make sure your timming mark isnt jumpin all around when your pointin your light at it... what condition is this motor in?

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'72 Valiant DD for over a decade-225-Disc brakes, big T-bars, big Sway bars f/r, carter bbd/super six, GM HEI, 2- 12" subs in trunk, 1000w amp...
'77 cherokee cheif widetrack-360-33x12.5 tires-no lift. keeps driveway dry-project/backup DD/mudder

The motor looks, sounds tight, but I bought it second hand with no history on the motor.

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Just because you are not "paranoid" doesn't mean they aren't coming for you.

coil? ive heard of them tweakin out when hot, and gettin kinda normal when cold. like the primary winding open when hott...

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'72 Valiant DD for over a decade-225-Disc brakes, big T-bars, big Sway bars f/r, carter bbd/super six, GM HEI, 2- 12" subs in trunk, 1000w amp...
'77 cherokee cheif widetrack-360-33x12.5 tires-no lift. keeps driveway dry-project/backup DD/mudder

I would put new plugs in before going any farther. You may have other problems as you meantioned but a gas fould plug will not come back to full life. A weak ignition can make this happen even easier and its impossible to look at the plug and tell if its gone to far or not. All that has happened may be showing you other porblems that you would not have know before but never the less a plug that has been hurt from gas is a bad plug and will cause alll kinda problems that will seem like other things.


Jess

I asked my buddy John to come look at it before I got any further since he was a chrysler mechanic for years.

He found the problem right away which is was I was hoping for.

Turns out that my bro in law, while playing with the points, dislodged the two plates apart where the little nub on the lower plate lines up with the hole on the upper plate in the dist.

I can remember asking him that night while we were trying to fix it if he moved those plates because it looked like they lined up there, and he said he did not move them.

That's all it was, and it cranked and ran like a champ, so my original problem was the broken wire from the dist to the coil and we caused problem #2 ourselves....Doh!

Live and learn I guess.

I took it for a drive today and all is back to normal.

I'm now in the market for an electronic ignition kit.

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Just because you are not "paranoid" doesn't mean they aren't coming for you.

Yeah, set and 'forget'....

Glad you found the problem,

-D.Idiot