I decided to see why my car is running rough by seeing if any of the plugs are missing.. I have a Delco Remy distributor which doesn't look familiar to me..I've never owened a GM stick shift either so that may explain it. I pulled off one of the wires and the spark was arcing back under the cap? I did this for all the wires.. one at a time of course :) and it did it on all of them. I didn't notice a big difference in how the engine ran connected or not? There was also a plastic locking ring holding the wires to the cap.. I liked that setup.. Any one else every do this? Normal?

What I was saying that there was a difference with wire connected and wire not connected but not a BIG difference. I thought it would be very obvious :confused: Looking through the Corvette Central book in the reading room this morning.. :D could that be my coil connected to the distributor??? I have to look under the hood again cause I don't remember seeing a seperate coil but I've never seen a setup like that before. Why would it be arching with no wire connected?? :confused:


[Modified by Koz, 8:41 AM 5/9/2002]

 

OK.. So this was a lame question? :conehead It's been a while since I played with motors that I didn't notice the lack-of or missing coil wire in the center of the distributor cap.. That's cause the coil is connected directly to the distributor.. right? Is this coil setup a good one or is a seperate mounted better? Do I get a choice? Getting an arch when I pull the wires off the distributor normal? I'm use to the distributor caps with the holes not posts so when I saw the arching I got curious.. Also, from what I remember from about 20yrs ago, when I pulled a wire of the distributor the motor got noticably choppy. On the vette it did not.. Any thoughts?

 

When you pull a wire off a 6 or 4 cylinder you notice a big diff. in performance because a larger percentage of the engine is not pulling it's weight. It's not uncommon for a V-8 to drop a cylinder and show little drop in performance. If you notice any change in RPM then it was working like it should and you can look elsewhere for the problem. As for the arcing, I believe it's normal.

 

What you have is called an HEI (High Energy Ignition) distributor. It's GM's version of an electronic ignition system (no points or condenser). What they did was embed the coil in the center of the cap. They used this system for many years without major modifications, so that should tell you how good it is.

All you might consider doing at some point is replacing cap, rotor, wires and plugs. I just had this done to my car . . . and even the wife noticed the difference!

 

Thank you! :cheers: