Recent work done on the car:
5/15/24: New dizzy cap installed
5/17/24: New valve cover gasket, cam seal plug, and spark plug seals
5/22/24: New spark plugs (NGK standard coppers)
5/29/24: Fuel filter replaced
Hi all happy 4th! My car sputtered and died yesterday (7/3/24) as I turned onto my home street and I ended up pushing it with the help of some strangers for the final block to my apartment.
Inspecting it the day after and come to find that my ignition coil is toast:
It was also a really hot day yesterday in SoCal and the car sat in the sun for a bit before I started my drive home. I am going to look into what it takes to swap the coil out from one dizzy to the other. I was also thinking to just swap distributors out entirely.
Any ideas on possible causes for this and how I can avoid in the future? Would swapping just the coil out potentially cause it to get fried also? Could wires be a culprit here? Thanks in advance for any help!
I also swapped out rotors and the distributor cap back to the one I had on previously. Going to keep an eye on the state of the coil periodically and see if it draws too much current and gets too hot for comfort. I still am unclear if this was an issue with some of the dizzy components failing and causing the coil to melt or if it was just a really hot day and parking in the sun set the thing up for failure. I’ve been in SoCal for two years now and driven in this kind of heat before, but maybe the coil was just on its way out. I also heard that moisture getting into the cap can cause issues so hopefully I can spot any trouble before I stall again by checking it every now and then.
I don’t think there’s anything of concern here other than the coil just being worn. If it’s not that, the ignitor could be another part to “monitor”. I remember back in the day that people would keep ignition coils on hand because it was a part that failed often, and it was somewhat easily replaceable
Writing an update to report that the car has been running fine ever since swapping out the ignition coil and the distributor cap. I am however noticing what appears to be some evidence of excessive heat causing some wear on the coil’s contact point on the distributor cap:
My thinking is that this is what was happening with my previous coil and cap and it gradually burnt itself down before it completely melted. Is this a sign that the coil and distributor are potentially pulling too high of a voltage than necessary and therefore causing damage? Thanks for any insight anyone has here, appreciate this forum
The small dark spot is expected coz the sparks arcing from the rotors to the points are high voltage. That’s why you need the replace the distr cap and rotors as standard maintenance. I recall the OEM igniter & coil being an issue if you ran an MSD system. I would expect the igniter and coil to be replaced once of twice for the lifetime of the car, unless you’re going with cheap aftermarket ones.
