Hi all,

Going down an interstate at 70 my daughters 1988 240 died on her. She has gas, in the tank at least... the distributor cap and rotor look ok, though I will be replacing them in any case....the wires from coil to distrib and distrib to plugs are attached and look to realtively new. What I am hoping might be a hint is that when I got to the side of the road maybe 15 minutes after it stopped running I was able to start it up normally and it seemed to idle fine but when I tried to drive away...as soon a I put it under any load it bucked, backfired and shut down again. My plan is to at least get a new dist cap and rotor and maybe replace the coil. I am thinking it is not a fuel issue because it appeared that I could idle all day long as long as I did not put any load on it and drive away. I am thinking it is something in the ignition system (coil?) for the same reason...how could it idle so smoothly if a connection was severed? What do you all think? It only has about 150k miles and has been the most reliable car I have ever had.

Thanks very much,
Jim Lee