My son's 81 242 died. It chugged for about a mile like it was running out of gas, then died. We investigated and found no spark from the coil. We swapped coils and coil wires with my car which is also an 81. My good coil and wire produce no spark on his car. His coil and wire produce spark fine on my car. So we're thinking it's something from where the two small coil wires come. One comes from the solenoid and the other comes from the engine wiring harness. We don't know where to go from here because we don't really understand auto electric. Any help would be greatly appreciated. For a while leading up to this, the solenoid would not disengage exactly when it should on starting the car, and he would get a short grinding noise. Would a starter solenoid gone quirky cause this no-start condition? The engine still turns over fine when we try to start it, but it has no spark from the coil so it won't start.
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Thanks to everyone for the help, Doug C. 81 242 Brick Off Blocks, stock, M46; 86 240, 131k