I know what you mean about the threads ending without a resolution. That's why I decided to post an update. With the miss vacuum was running around 17 with a slighlty fluctuating needle. Now it's just over 18 and is steady as a rock.
The only 2 things I can see by looking at the pictures is a black smudge at the button. Probably nothing. The is a slight groove on some of the pick ups and nothing on the others. Last pic came out slightly blurry but there is visible contact from the rotor.
I doubt I could have installed it off center. It has to fit the groove on the ICM and the screw holes need to align. Who knows for sure? I've screwed up simpler things before. On the bright side I have basically all new parts.
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It's one thing when a distributor cap fails and it shows us where it didn't hold up
under the stress. It's another when the problem occurs where we can't see it?
I took one of your photos, added some fill light and a couple of arrows:
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Don't know if what looks like a crack is just a cosmetic flaw, or there's a
subsurface crack that would cause the terminal above it to short to ground?
(Assuming new dizzy is the aluminum body version?)
And the other arrow with the question mark is pointing to what looks like
a blackened area behind the terminal? If this where the high voltage
was taking a shortcut through the insulator?
At any rate, of all the things that I've had the (dis)pleasure of troubleshooting
for sheer unpredictable weirdness, High Voltage takes the cake. By now I'm
never surprised by what happens when high voltage is involved. Especially inside
a closed cavity with a whirling rotor spinning at speeds approaching 3000 rpm.
(50 times per second.)
I appreciate your quick reply to my photo request. If possible, give it one more
look in the daylight, and include the exterior of the cap for any signs of where it
failed to contain the bottled lightning.
And if still passes a close visual inspection in the daylight then I guess that we
don't get to know where the high voltage failure occurred. But when you choose a
hobby like this you have to resign yourself to not always getting to know why
a part failed? Just like nobody gets to bat a thousand or other examples of perfection.
Again, thanks for closing the loop on this. If it stays running smooth for awhile, then
consider adding (Solved) to the end of your title. This way other folks searching for
an answer will know that this is one of the threads that has a payday at the end.
Tip of the hat in your general direction.
Cheers --