55 sudden stop

[Ford coupe]

coming home from meet today my vicki suddenly stopped on the road as if someone pulled the coil wire..Got under hood and all wiring seemed in place and could see nothing wrong..Got in and tried it several times and all of a sudden started up and ran fine...It was very hot today but temp guage was only up a little over half so ifeel it lost fire since it stopped so quickly ...Could yhe coil break down because of the heat...Scared to go drive now so need some help here///Thanks in advance..

 

[Lamar Wadsworth]

Coil could do that. Also inspect the wire from ignition switch very carefully. I had the same thing happen on an off-topic '79 Toyota pickup. The wire to the + terminal on the coil looked fine but when I touched it the end fell off. Replaced the terminal and solved the problem. Also could be a bad condensor.

 

[50fordcoupeman]

I had the same issue with my avatar. Turned out to be a bad coil.

 

[Daves55Sedan]

Heat can break down these cheap chinese made ignition condensers. It is probably the first thing to check. But the ignition coil can fail due to heat also.
I'm still running my '55 Y-block load-o-matic distributor with conventional ignition, but nowadys, I don't go far and always carry a couple spare new NAPA Echlin condensers with me just in case. All you need is a screwdriver and two 5/15" open end wrenches to change one.

 

[Anteek29]

Bad coil. Had an intermittent coil on a brand new '53 Willys. Same on a '67 Austin Healy. Both would quit while driving...drove dad and me nuts until we found the problem!

 

[Ole Don]

My 55 quit at a stop light years ago. At home later, I chased wires down to the distributor. Where the hot wire went under the plate, it broke inside the rubber insulation. The wire broke from years of the advance moving to advance and back. Darn thing failed after only 55 years of constant moving.