Packard Forum Index » Post-War (1946-54)

Had a new one on me today. 40 Super would suddenly drop dead after 20 minutes or so. It had carb, fuel pump, distributor and coil issues; that combination kept my head spinning for quite some time. But the camel-back-breaking-straw turned out to be the rotor which looked just like the one pictured earlier, After much fiddling the car would no longer run at all even though I had a hot spark coming off the coil. Put in a new rotor and she fired right up. The rotor did not look deteriorated to any significant degree but at this point can only assume the spark was leaking through some internal crack down to the distributor shaft 'cause it sure wasn't finding its way out of the distributor.

I have seen any number of bad Delco rotors of the type with the carbon resistor--the durn thing just falls out. My first ever roadside breakdown at age 19 in a 55 Constellation was due to that. This would be my first ever Autolite rotor failure.

Ok I put the new rotor in today and it won't fire, put the old one back in and it fired up again. Im moving on to the gas tank now. I have a post for it.