blown coil (fwd)

[Dan Simoes <dans@ans.net>]

The new owner of my 84 4kq reports:

> The ignition coil blew  and puked out all of its oil....
> As luck would have it, there is a guy named Jimmy that runs a shop in
> Waitsfield called Mill Brook Imports. 80% of his work is with 
> Quattros, and he has about ten of 'em in  various styles and levels 
> of completion in his lot. 
> 
> He put in a used coil for $65 which got the car running, albeit 
> not very well (It takes a bunch of tries to get it going and the idle
> is erratic).
> 
> Anyway, Jimmy says the ignition system needs to be looked at and set 
> up properly. He believes the car is running too cold, and wondered if
> you had installed a colder thermostat in it. (Driving down today, 
> it took the car a good two hours to get out of the white band at the 
> bottom on the dash temp indicator, and the gauge never got far above 
> 60. I think the new heater core is the only thing the made it 
> bearable!)
> 
> Jimmy's number is 802-496-4167, if you feel like giving him a call. I
> would like to get your opinion on this, because he guessed the repair
> would cost anywhere from $250-$400 depending on what needs to be 
> replaced.

Two questions:

1) Does anyone know this shop, which is in VT?  Sounds to me like he
is fishing for work that doesn't need to be done.  The car never
had any cooling problems and it is unlikely that it developed them
in the space of a week.

2) There is no "setup" of the ignition system per se, is there?
There is coil, there is timing, that's it.  The only thing I would
call "setup" is the FI mixture, and that was fine.  

I'm too far to troubleshoot this myself, and I feel bad that the guy
is already having problems.  Any thoughts? (besides don't buy a car
from Dan!)

| Dan |
-- 
Dan Simoes                                dans@ans.net
ANS Communications 		http://coimbra.ans.net/dans.html
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