After several hours of trouble free operation, following the last major headache with head gasket, the car went from running perfectly to barely working. After some trial and error, I determined that I was getting an arc from the coil wire to the negative coil terminal. I tried a fresh wire with a brand new boot (Accel) and, same thing, an arc from coil negative to the edge of the rubber boot. Does this indicate a malfunctioning coil, or is there some way to seal the boot better? I feel like if I solve this situation, the car will go back to running well again.

I had this same problem on another car, my solution was to just replace the coil. No more arc.


~THOR~

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1984 D100 Shorty Custom
Certified Auto Appraiser - RevItUp Classic Appraisals
President - Cherry City Bombers CC
Part of Tyrde-Browne Racing

Yep, once such an arc occurs for awhile, it creates a carbon track in the coil tower that will remain conductive no matter how good the boot. You can try scrubbing the coil tower with denatured alcohol and a toothbrush and see if that makes the arc quit, but you'll probably want a new coil.

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

Spark will take the easiest path to ground. It's either a crack in the coil tower or the spark doesn't get thru the cap and rotor.

Pull the coil wire out of the distributor cap and hold close to ground and see if the spark will jump there instead of at the coil. See how far away you can hold the wire before it jumps at the coil.

If it's a pretty good jump, check out your cap and rotor.

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

Thanks, I'll check it out.

Looked further and found a broken off center contact on the rotor. That might be the real problem right there.
Like a good slant six, it still got me home.