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I drove my '39 120 approximately 100 miles yesterday with no issues whatsoever. I go to drive it again today, got less than a mile and the engine quit on me. I was able to restart after a minute, drove about 100 feet back home, it died again. This repeated until I was almost home, at which some smoke was coming out of the dash. The wire that runs from the switch to the coil was too hot to touch and had started to smoke. I pushed the car home after disconnecting the battery.

I know very little about points systems. I did not leave the key in the on position for an extended period of time. The car ran fine until it stopped dead today. Can anyone point me in the right direction to figure out what the heck is going on? Bad condensor maybe? Thank you.

The wire inside the armored cable is shorting out. Problem is, it is a 75 year old cotton covered wire inside a sheath that has twists and vibration. Result you are experiencing. Lucky your car did not catch fire.

Immediately disconnect battery. Remove ignition switch (two machine screws, backside, and two wires) unhook from backside of coil. Now the fun part to remove it from the car. Once removed, you will have to carefully "decrimp" the backside of the ignition switch pot metal housing to access the wire. Clean contacts, replace wire. (carefully selected wire for flexibility). Now mix up some epoxy and a fixture to clamp it back together.

Reinstall, reconnect, refresh and relax.

Ok, thank you for the idea. It does make a lot of sense, more than any sort of component failure in the distributor or coil since it would restart and run ok after dying. Looks like I have a little work to do before I get to take her out again.

Looks like I got very lucky... The coil wire from the switch to the coil is burned to a crisp as suggested.

I wish more people would replace this wire as a matter of routine restoration, but my experience suggests not. Probably because of apprehension related to "uncrimping" the backside of the ignition switch. If you would be so kind as to photo your process to make this repair, I believe it may dissolve some of the fear and mystery. Yeah, it will be an epoxied mess when you get it back together, but who's gonna see it ?? The more you do, then neater your result...hmm...I may have a couple ignition switches if you are looking for practice...

Better than your car catching fire.

on my car they cut the armored cable and there is maybe 4 or 5 inches of it coming from under the dash and then the wire just comes out. a new wire was used, but was it crimped onto the old wire...idk yet. if the original wire is still in what is left of the armored cable, I'll be replacing that too.

On both my 35 eights, the original ignition switches and armored cables are replaced, I assume because of this.

and when I say "uncrimp", one suggestion is to take a small dremel/grinder to smooth out the 3 crimps in the pot metal....

When it comes to selecting an epoxy I would suggest using PC-7. It is a little runny when first mixed, but after several hours of curing (A temperature dependent process that can be accelerated with a heat gun) it becomes very moldable. Once it stiffens you should be able to easily shape it into the form you want. Once it sits overnight it will be rock hard.

Good luck with your repair.

I finished the repair yesterday and, alas, I did not stop to take pictures. I did just whip up a quick-and-dirty drawing of the process... hopefully this will help someone in the future (assuming they can read my chicken scratch).

I also attached a picture of the wire connection at the coil showing the extent of the missing insulation and the general "crispiness" of the 75 year old wire... this alone should convince those who haven't done this to pull it off. It took me about 2 hours of actual work to accomplish this project, a lot of which was under the dash work trying to get room to maneuver.

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