The stock points distributor set-up is not designed to last running full system power of some 13 vdc. Maybe Mid can give a expert explanation of why the stock system was built with voltage reducing resistance in place.
My suggestion to you is to dump the stock ignition set-up and move up to a more powerful and reliable electronic version. For SBFs many turn to something like the Pertronix stuff. That's what I put in mine (and yes, I have no street time) but it fires things very nicely and has built in stuff like multi-spark and a rev limiter too.
My suggestion to you is to dump the stock ignition set-up and move up to a more powerful and reliable electronic version. For SBFs many turn to something like the Pertronix stuff. That's what I put in mine (and yes, I have no street time) but it fires things very nicely and has built in stuff like multi-spark and a rev limiter too.
I assume a flaky condenser would also explain the varied sparks I got from the coil and plugs, which I attributed to other potential causes. I really wanted to avoid just throwing parts at the problem until something fixed it, so we spent a lot of time trying to test various components. But now we have a rebuilt carb, a spare starter solenoid/relay, and a spare coil. Everything that was wrong was related to the re-man distributor I bought a while back - vacuum advance was misadjusted, points needed cleaning and adjusting, and the condenser went bad. At least we learned a lot.