Coil wire blew off?!

///Matt · Dec 8, 2018

cruising down the road, 440’s not quite warmed yet... i goose it a little, get an intake backfire... drive politely to the next stop light 2 miles down the road. At the light, the engine dies. Try to restart, sounds good until I let the key go, then it dies again. Push it out of the intersection (thanks, lift-off hood!!!!) and find my coil wire detached. Plug it in, start up, drive away.

What. The. Actual. Fart.

Anyone ever had this happen?!? Coil is relocated to the passenger fender, so I very much doubt that pressure from a backfire did it.

miller · Dec 9, 2018

Coil wire too short? Engine torque pulled it off?

///Matt · Dec 9, 2018

It’s not that short, it’s got enough slack that I’m pretty sure if the engine torqued far enough to pull it, it would also have broken my steering column with the headers (or the other way around)

69roadr · Dec 9, 2018

At least it was an easy fix

65wgn440 · Dec 9, 2018

I would guess that it just wasn't seated completely and finally just vibrated off. Backfire was probably a result of wire coming loose rather than cause of it. I would make sure terminal is 'spread" open enough to make TIGHT connection into coil tower.

khryslerkid · Dec 9, 2018

I know with just a thin film of dielectric grease on the tower or in the boot, it will slip off easily on it's own. I'll clean it real good and push it back on and with air inside the boot it still doesn't want to stay on. So if you insert something small under the boot, like a straw off a spray can, it will let the air out as you push the boot on. Then remove the straw.

///Matt · Dec 9, 2018

I’ve got new plugs, coil, wires, and ECU en route. After the escapade, my tach is “wobbly” cruising. It erratically moves several hundred RPM at cruise without the engine changing. They’re all parts of unknown age and origin, on the car when I got it, so can’t hurt.

beanhead · Dec 10, 2018

Like Kid says sometimes grease on the boot helps it slip out really easy and it can pull the wire with it, as they don't always snap in with much tension. What I've always done is use the end of a Phillips screwdriver to open up the terminal on the coil wire a little bit so that it snaps into the coil really good..

///Matt · Dec 10, 2018

I didn’t see any grease on it, but it did look a bit corroded. I guess it’s probably just been working loose a while now and finally jumped. But man, that sucked.

Really makes me want to get around to putting a hinged hood back on it. If it had been hinged, I wouldn’t even have had to push the car off the road, as it took me all of 4 seconds to identify and correct the problem... but with a lift-off, it was a whole other ball game.

Coil wire blew off?!

///Matt

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miller

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///Matt

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69roadr

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65wgn440

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khryslerkid

FBBO Gold Member

///Matt

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beanhead

May I Land My Kinky Machine

///Matt

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