66 dart with a strange ignition issue

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OChav

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I've never seen anything like this but my 66 dart with a 225 has no spark on 3 of the cylinders, when I go to one of the plug wires with no spark and pull the end of the wire out from the distributor just a bit it'll start arcing and that cylinder will start firing.

Stopped by the parts store today and got a set of wires but there is no change. Cap and rotor both look brand new but not bought by me so I'm not sure. What could cause the wire to get spark when unpluged and arcing, but not when its actually pluged in? Where do I even start on this one?

Engine was running fine a few weeks ago when I bought the car but seemed to start running terrible out of nowhere, along my path I decided to check the ignition timing and everything was going good until #1 lost spark. I then checked the other cylinders using my timing light to see if they're firing and #5 and #6 are dead too, but 2, 3, and 4 are look perfectly normal. And also #1 now has intermittent spark (fires a few times and stops for a second and fires a few more times).

Sorry for long story and bad gramar, any helps appreciated. One more thing to add I think I might be hearing some arcing inside of the distributor (makes sense) but it's hard to tell with all the other rattles this car makes.
 
I would pull the dist and check it for wear and a bent shaft. Check points gap carefully and see if there is enough play in the shaft, the advance plate and so on to cause the points gap to change
 
67Dart273 said:
I would pull the dist and check it for wear and a bent shaft. Check points gap carefully and see if there is enough play in the shaft, the advance plate and so on to cause the points gap to change
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Isn't it still weird that it would consistantly miss and hit the same cylinders? Everything looks normal underneath but after thinking about it I'm just going to get a brand new distributor, is it a waste of time to try something off ebay?
 
Points gap is probably closing on the suspect cyls due to rubbing block wear. Adjusment might fix it, or else new points. Get a new cap & rotor.
 
Put a dwell meter on it to see what the points are doing.
 
Sounds like the points are losing thier ground. Make sure the housing is grounded to the block.
 
Also, some distributor caps had a grinding operation done off-center, making some terminals have different gaps to the rotor. Check to be sure you don't have that problem.
 
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