bad ignition

[68 A]

before i put my dart away for storage last year it was having an ingition problem. It was skipping real bad. I'm looking for some advice on where to look first. The cap, rotor and wires were replaced by the previous owner that did not drive it, so they could have potentially been on there for 5 years, but only about 300 miles. I dont know much about the points and condenser and have not looked at any of the spark plugs. Hopefully i can get some advice so i dont spend money on replacing all the ignition parts.

Thanks

[Chryco Psycho]

points would be the first thing I would look at or change& check the shaft to see if the bushings are worn causing point gap to vary

[MEK-Dangerfield]

If the car wasn't driven much, I wonder about bad gas in the gas tank. 

  Mike

[71383bee]

Well if you are absolutely stuck on keeping the points I would check the basics.  Check the points gap.  Replace the points and condenser if wary.  They are very cheap the last i checked.  How are the plug wires?  Are any boots loose?  Pull the plugs and see how they look.  It could be something simple like a loose plug not grounding properly or a bad wire.

Honestly, I wouldn't waste time on the points and spend some money on an electronic conversion.  You can do it fairly cheap with a repo harness, a LX-101 box from Carquest, and a replacement electronic distributor from 72-till 78 from most parts houses.  They are cheaper than the overpriced stuff from MP and the LX-101 box is better than the orange box anyways.  The missing link would be the curve in the distributor, but even the mp units are way off too so any distributor could use a good curve.

[68 A]

points would be the first thing I would look at or change& check the shaft to see if the bushings are worn causing point gap to vary

i all really know about the points is that they are somewhere in the system. This is making me think that it is where the rotor makes contact to the (points?) on the distributor cap.

If the car wasn't driven much, I wonder about bad gas in the gas tank. 

  Mike

I put a new gas tank on in August, so its all fresh gas in it.

Well if you are absolutely stuck on keeping the points I would check the basics.  Check the points gap.  Replace the points and condenser if wary.  They are very cheap the last i checked.  How are the plug wires?  Are any boots loose?  Pull the plugs and see how they look.  It could be something simple like a loose plug not grounding properly or a bad wire.

Honestly, I wouldn't waste time on the points and spend some money on an electronic conversion.  You can do it fairly cheap with a repo harness, a LX-101 box from Carquest, and a replacement electronic distributor from 72-till 78 from most parts houses.  They are cheaper than the overpriced stuff from MP and the LX-101 box is better than the orange box anyways.  The missing link would be the curve in the distributor, but even the mp units are way off too so any distributor could use a good curve.

I had thought about changing it to an electronic ignition, but i have no experience with them. I dont really know what i need to buy, how to install it (not very good with wiring). I'll check the plugs, i think the wires were changed with everything else so they have low miles but possibly 5 years old. Also, i have never heard of the curve in the distributor, could you explain that?

Thanks,

Steve

[Chryco Psycho]

fi your car is a small block you can get the wiring you need from a Dodge truck in the wreckers & the dist & ign box as well , or you can buy a Chrome box from Mopar , it is basically a 1 wire install , the  bluew wire to the ign box needs to be tiedinto the blue wire to the ballast resistor , , the black wire needs to go to the - coil terminal  & you need to replace the dist & plug it into ther new wiring
 the curve in the dist is the advance curve , this advances the timing a certian # of degrees as the rpm rises , this curve can be altered to get the engine to mmake more power

[68 A]

i think that it may be easiest for me to purchase an electronic ingnition conversion kit. I feel that may be my best option with having the correct parts that i need. I looked this one up from mopar:

http://www.mopar.com/m_perf_subcat2Check.jsp?SubSubSubGrpID=365&dummy5=1143700805137

My understanding is that a chrom box will supply a hotter spark and more power than the electronic contol unit that comes with this kit. Will this kit support a small block that is 300 horse power (plan on doing a rebuild next winter) or will i want to have the chrome box?

Thanks

[Bullitt-]

  I'm trying to sell a used electronic dist. & wiring & ballast resistor on ebay right now. all you would need is the controll box  you can get at any parts store.
http://motors.search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZbeth5858dog 

[Chryco Psycho]

I would use the Chrome ign box