The obscure, intermittent and somewhat unpredictable ignition problem in my 1983 GL is back. Today, my son drove to his girlfriend's (about 10 miles), then to lunch. Car sat about 40 minutes. They drove back, and in a short distance--miss and die. The car cooled a couple of minutes, restarted, drove a shorter distance--miss and die. After sitting an hour, I was able drive the car the 10 miles home--almost; got 9 1/2 miles, and the car did the miss and die thing again.

Now, I still haven't gotten the #@*& old rotor off of the shaft, so perhaps that is the source of the problem. Also, I inspected the distributor cap more carefully and suspect that my son had, in fact, assured me it was on correct when, in fact, I believe it was on backwards. (There is a small notch on the distributor; a small bump on the inside of the perimiter of the cap; these are towards the passenger compartment on my car and I assume line up?) So I put the cap on the way I believe it belongs, and it seems to clip on easier and seems more stable when in place. In the process, of course, I had to switch spark plug wires around and discovered the #3 wire had somehow worked its way loose in the boot at the connection to the distributor cap. Got that fixed.

So, suspects include: the old rotor; placement of the distributor cap; bad connection in the brand new spark plug wire #3. Whatever the true culprit (and this was a problem 6 months ago that healed spontaneously, and then recurred as I began my tuneup), it seems to be heat related--I believe some electrical/ignition componenent reaches some temperature and fails to make contact with whatever other part it is supposed to make contact with.

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