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.

 

my money would be on the ignition module in the base of the distributor. they heat up & fry whenever you are low on money, your girlfriend breaks up with you, or it's your first day at a new job.

they should call them the "PITA piece"

it should be easy to check your signal to the coil with the remote mount coil.

alternator won't keep it from running, just make battery not charge.

hth?.

 

Mine did this on me once too. There was a power lead going into the Accel coil pack (in the distributor cap). It vibrated out and shut off the one night I didn't take my cell phone with me. I'd also say that it must be a bad coil, coil wire, rotor, bad ground/power connection or maybe even a timing chain failure if it has tons of miles. But that one's a real long shot.

 

ignition coil module is a thought, I ahd similar problems on my 85 2.8L camaro, not sure if its a similar setup on 305s.

you could pickup an aftermarket ACCEL coil at diso**** auto, I thought it was a decent little piece of machinery when I put it on my 85, either way it can help you rule stuff out and if you still odn't want it after oyu test it return it.

 

I would've never thought of the ignition module. I guess I'll check that and the coil first and then go from there. I checked all the connections going to the distributor and they look fine, but I'll check again. I'll probably do some testing before I start taking stuff apart. I knew I kept my old computer controlled distributor for some reason. I'll let you guys know what happens.

 

The module in your computer controlled distributor is different from the one in the vaccum advance unit you have.
I may have some extra stuff laying around...
I'm painting my car today, so give me a call this evening if you don't get something fingered out.

BTW- you can't just hold the boot near something metal to check spark- stick something metal like a screwdriver down in the boot, touching the spark plug terminal. Then put that near something metal and grounded.

 

Well, I got it running. Fortunately it wasn't the module, otherwise I would've been screwed. It turned out to be the coil. I just swapped the one from my CC distributor and fired right up on the first try. Thanks for the help guys.

Whistler- I'll keep that spark stuff in mind for the next time (hopefully not anytime soon). I wasn't really sure how to do it, but now I do. If you have an extra coil laying around I might use it. Mine has some rust on it. Don't know if that makes a difference. I'll give you a call later this evening.