The problem started on the way to a show about 100 miles from our home. We normally go for the whole week to mostly see friends from out of state, drink beer, etc. When we arrived I started with changing plugs. Prob still occurred. Pulled cap and found corrosion, and multiple snap ring pieces inside the cap. So I am am thinking prob found. I knew replacing the snap ring would be something that MSD would tell me I would have to send to them to fix. The cap and rotor looked awful! I would have replaced the cap and rotor only but the broken snap ring led me to think the reluctor wheel could spinning in a way to misfire. So off to the car show I go to find a dist. Found the only 85551 dist there and bought it. Once back to the hotel we checked timing, pulled dist, swapped cam gear, dropped new dist in, checked timing. She fired right up and I drove down the road, the prob was still there.
The next day another friend who arrived had brought an identical carb that was brand new to try. We wanted to rule out the carb without tearing into it. We swapped carbs and the car would not fire. Found out the carb had been used once for an engine fire up and had been placed on a shelf for the past two years. Nuff said about that. LOL. Put old carb back on and had to swap plugs again. The car ran good enough to get us home.
Here are some theories and things we looked at etc. Bad gas was ruled out with a fresh tank. There is a lot more Ethanol in gas these days. One theory was the circuit board in the carb could be gummed up from the excessive Etanol??? We also put a temp gauge on each cylinder header pipe and all pipes read within 50 degrees. Is that a huge variation in temp or is that common? Spoke to MSD and they say it isnt the 6AL or the coil???? I did not want to throw money at the problem but after seeing the shape of the dist I was convinced that was the problem. I have also looked under the hood at night with the engine running and there are no "fireworks" with the plug wires going on. I have a spare 6AL to try but I am not looking forward to crawling under the dash to swap it out. I will check the coil next.
Thanks for the help!!!!
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