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Last night I was doing about 70mph up the hill on Hwy24 as I approached the Caldecott Tunnel in Oakland. Then I felt a miss. Then a backfire. Then some power loss. I quickly cut across three lanes of traffic onto the shoulder where the engine quit, just about 25 yards from the tunnel entrance. Bay Area residents know what happens when somebody stalls inside that tunnel! I was lucky.
As I started to investigate the problem a Caltrans tow truck showed up, so I had an assistant! ("Of course I don't need a tow. But would you like to turn the key for me while I play around?") First thing I checked was the ignition. Hooked up the inductive timing light (don't leave home without it!) to the coil wire and found no spark going into the distributor. Good. It's not FI. Checked voltage to the coil (don't leave without the VOM either) and found 12V. Good. Ignition switch is good. Hooked up dwell meter (carry this, too!) and found the points were doing their thing OK. The points also looked pretty good, so I ruled them out. So my attention turned to the coil. I dug through my trunk until I found the crusty old Borg Warner coil that came on an old car I used to own (carry spares!). I hooked it up, and the car fired right up and ran smoothly. I shook hands with the cordial tow truck driver and went on my way.
What can cause a fairly new (~3yrs old) Bosch "blue" ignition coil to fail? Did the blue coil supersede the OE coil? Can I keep that old Borg Warner coil on my car or am I better off with another Bosch blue coil? Or can I get an OE "black" coil anywhere?
Has anyone else had experience with a relatively new Bosch coil quitting in mid-flight?
-Mark Fuhriman
'69 Fastback
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