Aggravated4life

Hey people,
My 86 coupe,I decided to take off the distributor cap and check the ignition system today.Just bored and I had a slight miss for a while and decided what the heck.

Lo and behold im glad I did this...I have the Hypertech Hi voltage Coil and performance distributors live wires.Man,every wire has a burn hole in two or three places.These wires were supposed to be really good to begin with.

They were not touching anything to burn through,like a hot exhaust manifold or anything,the burns were even up near the cap in the back.Weird,for all the holes,youd think it'd miss real bad but it didnt.

The dist. cap itself has some bad carbon burn tracking and lots of blistering white deposits on the terminals inside.The red wire for the coil looks like it melted a tad bit in one place.I have never seen this before this bad on my car,at least not with the stock wires and coil.
Is it possible the coil was simply overkill?I have maybe 10,000 miles on these parts and im going to install my TPIS wires and get a stock coil back on there plus put new delco plugs in.I cant remember what plug gap I had set on the motor but I know it was what they recommended,something like 45 or 55.I have to pull them out and check.

If it helps,the stock wiring harness looks fine and nothings melted or anything like it was shorting out somewhere.None that I can see anyways.The car was running real good and strong,just had that noticeable miss at idle.Maybe I found something before it got real bad.

Any ideas?

:crazy: :smash:

scorp508

How old is the bushing in the distributor cap? The thing with the spring on it.

lead foot 85 vet

I'm on the edge of my seat ............I was just about to pull the trigger and buy one..................sounds like the 53,000 volts is over powering the plug wire insulation............msd's are only 42,000 volts.........
:chevy

MyZ51

Are you running an MSD box on this setup too? With the MSD you have to run a special carbon button, the piece that Scorp's asking about. The MSD overheats the stock one, and just melts it. You have to remember that the stock coil has enough voltage that if you have bad plug wires it will actually burn a hole through the rotor to ground, and the car doesn't run. Electricity takes the course of least resistance, so if its easier to burn a hole through the rotor than go through the plug wire, than it will.

scorp508

:yesnod: I have the MSD one, its about $11.

65Z01

Hmm, I've been running a HyperTech coil/cap/rotor on the IROC for 6yrs and on the Vette for 3yrs. I had two terminals come out of the one on the IROC after about 4yrs but no carbon tracking.

I would suggest a gap of around .45"-.48" and a set of hi-performance wires. The IROC has MSDs and the Vette TPIS; no wire burning in either case.

What wires are you running?

Aggravated4life

Hey guys,
Thanks for chiming in...to start,Im not running an MSD or anything.Im running the stock style cap,hypertech coil and live wires made by performance distributors.The bushing,I believe was new and came with the coil kit,but im not 100% positive now...im pretty sure the bushing,rubber and spring came with the kit.Im beginning to think I was getting too much voltage to begin with.If I had a digi cam,I could take the pics and you can see better what looks wrong.

If Im supposed to have a better bushing,say like the equivalent of the MSD style to work with higher voltage,that may be the problem,but I do know everything was replaced when I had the engine rebuilt about 10,000 miles ago(3 years or so).But as I said,the red wire that comes from the coil to the dist end terminal looks like it melted a tad bit in one area,maybe 1/4 inch away from the coil itself,so Im gonna just go with stock GM pieces for now and install my TPIS wires Ive had sitting in a box for 3 years now and never used.

I wanted to see if anyone had problems from possibly too much voltage with this set up and had symptoms like mine.
:)

jfb

The umpty ump gillion volts claimed for aftermarket coils is never seen in normal operation. This voltage only occurs when no spark happens. Normally the voltage to jump the plug gap is way lower than even 10,000 volts. When you see carbon tracks inside the distributor cap, this is usually caused by open circuit plug wires. I have also seen carbon tracks caused by water condensed inside the dist cap and the spark jumping to the water. The high voltage pulse will jump somewhere when the plug wire is infinite resistance and usually it will jump inside the cap, or even worse, through the dimple on the rotor under the rotor spring. Burns on plug wires near the distributor is caused by a good plug wire for a foot or so and a nearby ground to the wire just out of the dist cap and thats were the spark jumps and eventually makes a carbon track. Aftermarket coils used with a conventional spark control module offer no significant advantage and the 40 gazzillion volts claimed is for influencing buyers that think higher voltage is better. The GM module and coil are entirely adequite for the C4.

Aggravated4life

JFB,
Thanks for the reply...while I cannot say for sure what went wrong,Im feeling positive the OEM style coil and etc wont give me this problem.I dont think I need a high powered ignition system anyways.Over the years Ive tried a few things on my car and I notice most were just a waste of money.I admit Im not a die hard 1/4 mile guy and drag racer,so to me the added expense didnt justify anything.
Heres a few that did nothing for me as far as I can tell:
SLp runners,ported more so
Larger TB
Performance Modified MAF
Power coil and 8mm plug wires
Air foil
K&N air filter
AFPR
Some exhaust mods

Im sure it goes on...as far as Sotp driving and the way the car idles and behaves,the mods I did didnt do anything I could tell in the everyday driving world.Im sure id need a track to see the small differences.Lately,I just dont care anymore.I want the car to run and last a long time!!It always drove great and strong,just never felt any difference in any mods I did.
:D
So i guesss slowly Im going back to stock items and be happy it runs good until I would ever need those mods on the street or track use.
Ive never gone wrong with the stock stuff as far as certain things go.I guess every car is different and some of us see gains from small mods and others dont or wont until we test at the track.Right now,the track can wait.

:)