Stranded!

Well, the oddest thing happened tonight... I was going to drive over to the bank and deposit a couple of checks. I got about halfway there, and just as I was going over a speed bump, the car lost power and died. I was in a quiet residential area, and it was easy to coast over to the side of the road with room for a tow truck (convenient, no?) and call AAA on my cell. I had minimal tools with me and it was getting dark. But I could see fuel in the filter so figured it was loss of power to the ignition from the speed bump. The tow dropped us off alongside Laurie's house next to us, and after grabbing some tools, I checked for power to the coil and distrib, which we had. Hmmm... I was sure there wouldn't be. But I went ahead and checked for spark at the coil. No spark, as I figured. So the electronic ignition module was looking suspect. I checked the Pertronix catalog and the '49 Cad takes the same part number.*** A quick cannibalization and I thought I was ready to go. But still no start. What I didn't get initially was, with the Cad part 1183, the point cam requires a sleeve which I failed to transfer at first. I was grabbing the coil off the '49er to try that when I realized the sleeve issue. With that moved over to the Pontiac, it fired right up. So I was able to move the car to the garage. Whew!

After getting something to eat and settling down, I went and ordered a replacement module (a Crane unit this time). But I started looking at the failed module and found that the problem was actually my fault! (Installer error!) Apparently the red wire to the module had gotten pulled too tight on installation, and it rubbed against the point cam. Eventually wore itself through and the wire broke. It wasn't visible until I took the module out of the distributor, and since it was dark, I didn't see it until I looked at it at my desk. I think it can be repaired and I know I for sure want to triple-check my installations for this now. At least the tow was free and the driver was nice. It wasn't a bad experience at all except for when I thought I had the answer and it still didn't fire up because of that sleeve. No harm done and I learned a few lessons.

***NOTE: The Pontiac distributor can accept either the 1183 Cadillac part, or the 1187LS lobe sensor part. However, the Cadillac can't use the 1187LS because the screw hole is slightly off.