I f*in hate this car.

TrailBeast said
Does your car have this connector between the distributor and coil?
I have seen these cars act just like you described because of an intermittant loss of connection at this plug.
Squeeze it down a little tighter and see if it does the trick.
When you said you heard a little "Tick" and it fired right up, that was why I mention this.
Mine went in the trash and is soldered and heat shrinked now, and never had that problem again.

I'm under my car's hood right now for the next hour before I go into work. Boy smoking did wonders...Yes the rotor wasn't pushed all the way in as it wasn't even on the clip. (There were a lot of "UH DUHHH!!s" going on." And wouldn't you know the cap just popped right back on. It's pretty embarrassing when you were once a freakin Jaguar mechanic and you can't even work on a simple car...I think it's because I have that mindframe to make things overly complex. (Which is why I was good at working on Jaguars.)

Anyways, that connection that you have a picture of is going to have to be un-connected and checked as there's oil blow-by all over the outside so God knows what's wrong on the inside. I noticed my ballast resistor is cracked above the top left terminal. Although I consider that to be a big problem, I highly doubt it's just the resistor.

Motopsycho said
sell it and buy a chevy

I would rather ride a bicycle than drive a Chevy. You should be lynched lol.

superchargeddrt said
Check to see if there is anything oozing from behind the ECU controll box. These controllers are notorious for overheating and burning out. A good indication that this might have happened is the epoxy that seals the ECU melting and oozing out from behind. Good Luck!!!!

I didn't see any oozing. The box is black which I would guess is either the original or OEM part. The contacts look fine, but I think I should take the box off and check the resistance.

racerhog said
Take a few pictures and post them up here....Give us a look under the hood....

I honestly don't have the time right now to do that as it's already 1PM and I have 30 minutes left to work on my car. I will definitely do that tomorrow. I have a feeling I didn't spin the distributor at any point as I tried starting the car and it sounds normal and doesn't sound out of time. I've pulled 1 spark plug so far and it was covered with gas and the tip is the colour of poop. So I'm definitely going to sand it and re-gap it because it still has a perfect ignitor point.

The other thing I noticed is there's a problem with the spark plug wire running to the ignition coil. There's no plastic grommet around the wire connecting to the coil and the circular metal piece that surrounds the wire is now stuck in the coil and I can't get it out. I would say that there's definitely a weak connection there as well.