My car died while I was driving down the highway tonight. Luckily, I was in a traffic jam and was only going ~20 mph. Anyway, I'm trying to figure out what happened and was hoping you guys could give me some opinions. The story is this: the car just cut out while I was driving, since I was still coasting, I popped it into nuetral and tried to start it back up. All it did was crank. I pulled off the road and popped the hood to see if there was anything obvious (loose wires etc.), nothing. I took the air filter off and tried to crank it agin, thinking my air filter was too dirty. Still nothing. I know it is getting fuel because I can smell it after I try to crank it. I had it towed back to my place and I'm going to work on it tomorrow. I think that the coil in my 6 mo. old Summit distributor took a crap on me. Either that or my alternator stopped working. I'm fairly positive its the coil because I pulled a plug wire and held it near a metal bracket to see if there was a spark. Yep, you guessed it, nothing at all.Do you guys think I'm close in my assumptions? Give me any and all advise you can. See sig for details on car.

 

To happen suddenly like that you might want to make sure your connections are good. See if you are getting 12 volts from the wire going to your coil with the ignition turned on. If you are and there is no fire then you are pretty narrowed down. If no 12 volts from the wire to the coil trace that back. Maybe loos wire on starter or fuse or something.

I have had quite a few bad alternators but as long as the battery still had juice the coil would still fire the plugs. It wasn't till the battery was drained that it wouldn't . Since you could still crank I would think your alternator was still good.

 

I had something similar happen to my '89 whil I was driving down the highway. It just conked out on me. I got it towed back to the house and while I was contemplating what to do with it, I just figured I'd give it one more crank, and WHAM!! It fired right up. The only thing was, it was a lot louder than it was before. As it turns out, my cat disintegrated and momentarily plugged it up but apparently the ride back to the house shook it loose. Either way, I left it alone 'cause it REALLY improved the sound!! Just thought I'd drop that by ya. By the way, the alternator's fine if the starter's turning over alright.

-COBB

 

I would be willing to bet its your fuel pump. The same thing happened to me in my 86 oh about 4 months back. I was on the freeway doing about 75 when the car hesitated mad style, came back, and then ------------------ dead. No power, had to steer it into the shoulder with no power steering or brakes, scary thing if you've never had it happen before. Anyway, I looked and looked, people tried to tell me it was the alt, but the car still had power, batt was charged good. It wanted to turn over, just couldn't because it wasn't getting fuel. Well, I had my friend shoot a blast of b-12 in the carb while I tried to start it and boom, fired right up. And there I knew it was the Fuel Pump. Swapped it and no more probs, at least from the fuel system

Hope that helps

Will

 

I just read the post more closely..... Good call on that spark test, I did the same thing. Try swapping ignition modules. They have a tendency to go out on you. I always have a spare in the car.\\\

Will

 

I have my old computer controlled distributor. I figure I'll just pilfer parts from that until I figure what's wrong. I think it'll all swap over. I'll do a little testing before I start taking things apart. Thanks for the help. I would've never thought of the ignition module. I'll let you guys know how it goes. Thanks.

 

Thanks for all the help guys. It turned out to be the coil. I just swapped in the one I had from my CC distributor and it fired up the first try.

 

I love happy endings. No wonder those summit distributors sell so much cheaper than the ZZ4 GM ones.