Car died while driving...help!

[Belltone85]

I was driving home this evening and my car just died while i was driving about 40km/h. I have no clue why it did this. now the engine won't start, it will turn over but won't start, there is fuel and i pulled off the air cleaner and looked into the carb and fuel is being sprayed into the carb when the pedal is pushed. if anyone could help me out it would be greatly appreciated. i had to walk home and i would really like to get my car home.

[moparniac]

did you ignition give out... I had a msd box quit on me??? call a tow truck!

[Belltone85]

I hope not, i mean everything was brand new 2 years ago and i probly only put around 3000 miles on it since. it is pretty dark out so i'll have to go back with a flashlight and try to figure this one out. it happened to me before last year and i called a tow truck, but i waited for an hour for the truck to come but then i just tried to start it one more time and it fired right up after an hour long wait, so i ended up cancelling the tow truck. to this day i have no idea what happened there.

[asm74]

Is it possible that it could be heat-soak at the coil?  How old is the coil?  does it get excessively hot, does it show signs of leakage?

I had this happen to me a couple of times in my camaro.  I swore that the coil was soaking up too much heat and burning out.  Replaced it with a firewall mounted msd unit and haven't had a problem in over a year. 

Other times i've noticed that after trying to start a few times the negative cable gets really hot which I suppose raised the resistance and caused poor grounding.  A friend of mine had an issue once with his distributor cap showing signs of carbon buildup at the center terminal, as well as condensation withing the cap.  Pulling it off and wiping it down helped, but only for a few days.

good luck.

[cudagirl4406pk]

check under the dash where the connector from the steering column goes into the big connector for all the electrical if not tight will cause that to happen i had same problem in my cuda the clip broke and not makeing a connection.

[Belltone85]

I believe the coil is about a year or maybe 2 years old now. i didn't notice it being very hot when i checked, but then again i just made sure that the connections were good, i could take another look.

[asm74]

Cudagirl has a good point, I discovered that it was possible, with a bad connector, to insert it backwards....  Im not saying thats whats happening, but just checking for loose connections at the firewall bulkhead is a good idea, and check your fusible link at the starter relay.

[Belltone85]

But if the connections were bad then it wouldn't be turning over would it? i would think it wouldn't do anything.

[Belltone85]

I checked again and the coil looks to me like it is still good, the starter relay seems ok but i'm sure it needs to be replaced soon, all the connections under the dash seem like they are connected properly, i am really at a loss here. it doesn't make sense to me why it did this. 

[Chryco Psycho]

lots of possible issues , is there a ballast resister in the coil circuit ?
is the MSD assuming that is what you have connected correctly ? I have had MSD products quit on me in the past for no reason , column or bulkhead connectors corroded or loose
 

[jeryst]

Like I've said before, It's either fuel or spark. If you're getting fuel, then it has to be spart. Don't base things on "This is only a year old, that is only two years old, etc". An electrical part can be bad right out of the box, or fail any minute after it's installed. You've obviously got an electrical part that is breaking down when it gets hot. That's why it quit and wouldn't start. That's also why it started once it cooled down. This type of problem can be intermittant, and happen at different times. Key candidates would be coil, ballast resister, or ignition box.

[JayBee]

When this situation once happened to my car it turned out to be the orange ignition module, had me running around in circles for a while. At the time it was less than a year old, like jeryst said, don't base things on age. Anyway, just sharing my experience and 2 cents.

[Belltone85]

I remember reading somewhere on here i think that the orange ignition boxes are not very good anyway and they tend to go bad quickly so i wonder if that is what happened. are the chrome ones any better?

[Jacksboys]

I had a MSD on my dart go out for no reason, so that could be your problem.  Mine was also about 2 years old.

[Belltone85]

I went out this afternoon and pulled one of the plugs and got a buddy to turn it over and i didn't see any spark coming from the plug.