Ignition System Cleaning & Tune-Up
   by Rotary Rocket
   rotaryrckt@aol.com

   It's a very good idea to tune up your ignition system every so often. First, clean everything. Pull the battery, cap & rotor, coils, wires and plugs. Mix up a solution of baking soda and water and brush off the battery. Watch the solution fizzle and pop as any spilled battery acid is neutralized. If your battery is of the non- maintenence-free variety, do yourself a favor and don't let any of the solution get inside the battery's cells. Keep the lids on the battery! Of course, this procedure should take place in a discrete location, as your pinko tree-humping neighbors might take offense to your rinsing that toxic waste off your peace-disrupting '7s battery and straight into their organic herb garden.

   Scrub down the battery, coils and the cap & rotor with a mild cleaner/degreaser, rinse them with water and dry 'em off. No, water will not hurt any of them. Assuming they don't need to be replaced, clean the wires as well. Don't know if you're wires are worn out? If they've got greater than 50K miles on them, you might as well spring for a new set. As well, if there's a great deal of corrosion on the connectors (fuzzy green dust on the copper ends) or any other obvious signs of damage, it's time to move on. Otherwise, you can test their impedance with an ohmmeter and look for consistency among wires. If any wires show a radically higher resistance than the others, this indicates breakdown of the wire, and it's time for a new set.

   Once everything is washed and dry, it's time to start tuning up. If the plugs are still in decent condition (center electrode is round, not rotor-shaped, and outer electrodes are reasonably squared off), wire brush the crap off of them that has undoubtedly built up. If you have access to a bench grinder with a wire wheel, that's even better. Rinse the bits of debris out of the plugs with WD-40 or a similar light solvent. Next, get one of those battery post cleaners (a funny wire brush device) and clean the battery's terminals and the connectors on the positive and negative/ground cables (still in the car, assumably). Make sure that you see bright shiny metal. If you don't want to do this too often, coat the terminals and connectors with a light layer of wheel bearing grease upon reassembly to prevent further corrosion. If you're keeping your old wires, brush their connectors, too. Again, you want shiny metal. I use the bench grinder on these, as well. Now give the same treatment to the cap and rotor (wire brush the crud off of the electrodes).

   Next, reinstall all the ignition parts you've removed. Reassembly is the reverse order of disassembly. :-) When plugging your wires back in, it's a good idea to make sure they fit tight. If the connection feels loose, try spreading the wire's connectors a bit (most are a split-tube type) and then plugging them back in. It helps to pull back the protective boot on the wire so you can see things better. Again, you can prevent the wires' connectors from corroding the same way as with the battery's terminals: a light coating of grease (light, not gobs).

   So now why did you just go through all that agony? A clean ignition system is a happy ignition system. Every little bit of dirt and grime on any of your ignition components is another place for the circuit to breakdown. I just performed this exact procedure on my '79 last weekend (9/7/96) when I noticed that at high rpm, I could watch a mini-lightning display under my hood as bolts of electricity crackled all over the filthy distributor cap. Lots of potential spark energy was being wasted as the electricity sought out the path of least resistance. This appeared to be why my '7 would run out of steam at about 6000 rpm charging in low gear up the long hill I must take to get home, because I no longer suffer from said malaise.