i have a 76 4 door and as i always do i crank it up go around the block and park it, seems to be every 2-3 months i will do that, got it in yesterday and not firing.. i really dont know where to start on this one and i havent checked anything besides maybe a mice or something chewed some wires and that wasnt the case
You'll need a test light for this. Any auto parts store will have one! Take the coil lead to the distributor out of the coil, ground your test light ( make absolutely sure it's grounded well or you may get a shock ) put it into the coil tower and while cranking the engine, slowly pull the test light back out of the coil. You should see a good series of sparks when the test light has a gap to the metal clip in the tower. If you have spark, check your rotor, cap, coil, and plug wires for any kind of burning or rust in the connections. ( especially look over the rotor and cap carefully ) all your plug wires won't fail at once. If you have no spark, follow this next set of instructions. With your ignition on and not cranking, see if you have power at the + terminal of your coil. ( red wire ) The test light should light. Put the test light on the - terminal on the coil and crank the engine. ( the light should flash on and off. ) If you had no power to the coil, disconnect the plugs to the module and the coil ( not the spark plugs ) and see if any are corroded. If you had power, but the light didn't flash on and off, take off the half moon plug on the coil, run a jumper from the - terminal on the coil to a good ground and using the test light connect it to the + terminal on the battery and touch the light to the + terminal on the coil. ( sorry about the long winded sentence! ) The light should light. If all these tests show good then, as was said, the module is more than likely bad. See if you can borrow one to test. Any Ford of this era will have one. I hope this helps! I'll also add that driving around the block is not nearly long enough to heat the engine up to get the moisture out of it! Give her at least a 10mi run. ( if this is possible )
