Ok so friday I parked my '91 Fleetwood FWD 4.9ltr in the driveway and I went out of town with my friend for the weekend. Monday afternoon I went to start it and everything was fine but I just sat in the driveway with it idleing while I was playing around with my stereo and after about 5 min. it died and would not restart it would turn over but not start. later that night I tried again and it started but seemed kind of rough.
so all day today ive tried to start it and it wont start like its out of gas but it has gas. so i checked all the fuses and they are fine. I pulled one of the spark plugs and grounded it while my brother turned the engine over and I couldnt get it to spark. so I pulled the coil and swaped it with the one off a chevy truck which also has the GM HEI dist. and still no start. I checked power to dist and it has power.
My brother says it might be the pick up coil which he says you might as well replace the whole dist for the work and price of the pick up coil.
does this sound right?
does anybody know what else it might be?
I havent checked the fuel pressure but i think it is fine.
I also just had a full tune up in the last 1000 miles air filter, fuel filter, dist. cap, rotor, plugs, wires, pcv, oil and oil filter, and cleaned out the throttle body and egr tubes.

At my Valet job we had a deal like this yesterday...but it was with a newer Northstar DeVille. Run a jump pack / jumper cables to it to make sure it has full power, turn the key to crank it, and gas it. It will probably take a few trys. Other than that...I have no idea.

Yeah, I had this happen. Actually when I was driving my car and it just died... no warning. I got it towed to my local NAPA dealer and I replaced the coil... still nothing (cranking, but no starting), then they said it was probably the module in the distributer. I replaced the module (it was about $105.00 Cdn), and sure enough it fired up like it was a brand new motor! Live and learn. Hopefully that is all that is wrong with your Caddy. :thumbsup:

Yeah I think it must be the module that my brother calls the pick up coil. I'll try that and see what happens. I work at NAPA so I get a good discount too so when I go in today I'll see how much it costs. Thanks guys.

Yeah, you know it's gotta be the coil, ignition module, pickup coil, or computer. If you weren't revving it hard when it went out, and it wasn't acting too bad the day before--it's probably not the coil. So that leaves the ignition module and pickup coil. Probably the pickup coil.

You work at Napa? You should be able to test the ignition module free there. If that tests ok, it's a good chance it's the pickup coil.

I work in the NAPA distribution center in the warehouse so I'll have to see if they can test the module I didnt know they could do that. I took the coil into Autozone and they didnt even know what I had. Its a GM HEI coil! they made like what 2 billion of these things! anyway they said they couldnt test the coil but I did that myself with a diff. coil. I havent had alot of time to work on it this week but I did look up the other parts at napa and they didnt even have a listing for a pick up coil. they had a module and a something-switch I cant remember i never had heard of some tiny little thing that cost twice as much as the module.
so ill see if they can test the module and go from there.
thanks for the suggestions.

Well the module did test ok. So I figured it must be the pick up coil. So I went ahead and bought an entire new distributor and she runs like new now.
Thanks everybody.
Mitch