SC ignitin system tune up question

[jwetering]

I need some basic advice:

My 1978 SC has 178K miles, the top end was done at 120K miles.

Up until recently, there has been no smoke on startup, but for whatever reason (backdated exhaust?) the car started smoking this year for the first minute of running.There's no smoke at all (that I'm aware of) when she's warmed up.

There's also a very slight miss at idle and at higher revs. This miss can't be felt at all, but you can hear it. The miss does not happen every revolution....only kind of randomly...again this miss is very slight. We put it on a CO analyser, and it reads good, so it's not a lean miss. There may be a small vacuum leak somewhere. I'm not too worried about it though because over all the car goes like the proverbial bat out of hell. Also, this slight miss has been with the car since the day I bought it 5 years ago. I've replaced plugs, caps, rotors since then a few times....

ANYWAY...I'm almost at the point of my post.....

I also checked my wires and berus last night. I read 880-990 ohms in every wire, and jiggling did not produce any bumps in this signal. The berus themselves measured 3200 - 3500 ohms each. One of the berus was very easy to remove from the plug compared to the others I am hoping this is related to my *miss*. I cut off the braided tails that ground the shielding on the wires and I plan to re-use them.

OK...here's the questions:

1) What spark plugs to use? What gap?

2) Should I smear a little dielectric grease on the ends of the wires - what product to use - where to buy?

Thanks for the help boys and girls..

[pbs911]

I use Bosch WR8 something something on my 78SC and gapped them to .31.

You can pick up dialectric grease at any autoparts store. its mearly lube for the distributor cam. I put a little dab at the spark plug connection ends.

[Targa77]

You should replace your sparkplug wires every 60K so if you have never replaced yours, then I would do it anyway, regardless of the tests. A misfire, espcially at high rpm can most often be caused by an ignition-related problem. Dielectric grease is always a good thing to use on the wire ends, cap fittings, CDS box connector, fuse panel contacts, etc.