Stalls, fires strong, no spark.

[Tytyranisaurus]

My little car likes to suddenly stall out at any speed (and sometimes at idle.)
Flawless performance until the stall. After a little bit of sit time (last time on the side of the highway ) It starts and runs great again.
A friend of mine and I have pulled a plug and found there is no spark immediately after the stall but the exhaust smells of fuel.
He suggested the distributor or the ignition coil. Both are pretty pricy and since it is a sporadic issue I wouldn't know whether it fixes the issue until it's too late.
Also I'm leery to pick one up at the junk yard considering it may be having the same issue.
This car is a great ride and my sister wants it to be her daily driver, i want to make sure it works flawlessly for her when she takes it back.
Anyone have any insight or experience with these issues I would very very much appreciate it. Thanks for lookin' guys!
-Ty

[KMpuggy]

Had similar problem with an old feista i had years back. Would just die at random, leave it for a few mins and it would fire up again. Turned out to be a dodgy coil lead.

[Tytyranisaurus]

so just the wire from the coil to the disty?

[323GTX-RSA]

Also check earth wires.

[me109]

New plugs/wires would be a great place to start. Also look at your distributor cap and rotor. If you think it could be related to timing, watch your crankshaft pulley to see of it wobbles while it's running.

I would definitely start with ignition. Seems like it might be an intermittent connection or heat buildup problem.

[Tytyranisaurus]

Thanks guys. It doesn't shake or wobble at all it just suddenly cuts out. I'm gonna just bite the bullet and buy a new ignition coil and see if that fixes it. If not new distributor. All that fails it's going to the mechanic

[jay]

Intermittent failure like this is almost never a coil or other component with a couple exceptions, it's nearly alway a loose connection. Plugwires, distys, coils, etc, when they fail they don't cut out then come back. Check leads going to *everything*; coil, engine/chassis ground, airflow meter, throttle position sensor, chassis/block grounds, loose plug/coil wires (make sure they're seatled), distributor, all of it. The 2 common components that can fail like this, total stall followed by recovery, are the airflow meter and the throttle position sensor. TPS is easy to diagnose. Either put an ohmeter on the outputs and look for jerky resistance changes when you turn the shaft, or just unplug the damn thing and see if the stall goes away. It'll run real rich at part throttle but won't hurt anything for a diagnostic testdrive. AFM, I've tested by just idling the car and wiggling the whole thing around and lightly tapping on it to see if anything loose inside is gonna make the engine quit. Oh yeah.. also look for any wire splices done by previous shadetree mechanics. Electrical tape or plastic crimps anywhere? Give 'em the stinkeye and go over 'em real good. It's taken me years to learn the lesson, but I've finally figured it out and have been getting rid of all such things on my cars and replacing them with solder and shrinktube.

Your symptoms exactly match what my GTX did to me at Oregon Trail on day 1 a few years back. We unplugged the TPS and went out and ran real fast on day 2 right up till the red mist caught me and we apexed a tree..

[Inseino]

Been there with my fwd B6T. Turned out to be 2 things. First check all wires going into the dizzy. They get pretty cooked near the plug end. I ended up just running a new set from the ecu to the dizzy. Second, rebuilt the whole thing. Wasn't that expensive. Bought everything off of Rockauto.com minus the advance springs which were like 7 bucks at Mazda.