The last few days I have been having a really bad problem with my car just shutting down for no apparent reason. It all started one day (particularly hot) driving home from work. I had been sitting in stop/go traffic for a while, and just when I made it to my street my car shut down just like I had turned the key off--no sputtering, just BOOM it was off. I pulled into a driveway, cranked on it a bit, but it would still not start. I started thinking vapor lock, but the carb was shooting a good stream out of the accelerator nozzles, all wiring looked good, etc. I got back in, and it cranked right up. Drove about 1/5 mile and shutdown again. Coasted to my driveway from there, but could not get it up the hill until I let it sit for about 30 minutes. Once I got up to the house, it quit again. I found that I could start it up, it would run about 3 minutes, and then shutdown. Start up after about 2 minutes, run 3, shutdown.

I replaced the coil, solenoid, and voltage regulator. Tested the unilite module per Mallory's procedure, and it looked OK.

Thinking the problem should be fixed, I drove down to the local 1/8mile strip this weekend (maybe 10 miles away). It quit on me again, fortunately before I had paid. I got it started back up, made it out to the main road after about 3 shutdowns and one M-80 class backfire (car would fortunately start right back up so I did not have to pull over). I pulled over at a bank and a friend who was following me said it looked to be running "rich as a pig". I tightned down the idle mix screws a little, and backed off the ignition timing a little. This seemed to make no difference, as the car shut down about 6 times on the way home.

My question is--is this another instance of the "reliability" of the Unilite module, or am I missing something? I hate to dump the distributor--it only has about 500 miles on it, but if this is a Mallory problem I do not want to risk another shutdown when I am turning across traffic or something.

If the consensus is that this is a dist. problem, should I go with an Accel, MSD, or ???. I just want something reliable and easy (not a points distributor).