Here's the deal, I had a leak in my header tube rewelded a while back and the technician managed to loose my passenger side plugwire looms in the process. A couple of days ago I was feeling a loss of power, but the car didn't necessarily seem like it had a consistant miss. Upon inspection I discovered that one of my plug wires had fallen against a header tube which had burned through the wire's outershielding down to the core. I ordered new wires immediately.

Today I foolishly decided to drive the car to a doctor's appointment knowing it had this problem. I got about three minutes from my house when (apparently) the entire ignition began to crap out. The car was bucking like a horse down the road with the ignition popping on and off intermittently, eventually crapping out all together. Once the car cooled a bit, I managed to get it cranked and made it about 200 feet up the road before it started crapping out again.

Now it's time to solve the problem. Obviously a single plug wire wouldn't cause the engine to die, but is there a chance it might have somehow shorted out my ignition module, etc?

My first instinct would be to replace the Hypertech "Street/Strip" HEI unit and the wires and see if that solves the problem. I also run an MSD-6AL. Any chance this unit could be suffering from the effects of the burnt wires, or might it be that I'm being distracted by the coincidence of a burnt wire that isn't even the root of the problem?

Thanks for any advice,

ROME

 

When you operate an engine with a plug wire disconnected (or open circuit), the high voltage pulse from the spark coil will jump on the inside surface of the distributor cap, or through the rotor cap to the nearest ground. Enough sparking on the same path and that path is carbonized and until the earth splits in two pieces, that is where the spark is going to go. Buy a new cap and rotor and install them when you install the new wires. The tracks are easily naked eye visible. Take a peek on the inside of your distributor cap. If you have an optispark, go down and see the loan arranger at your bank. :D

 

thanks jfb :) I'm ordering a new power coil tonight.