Okay...a younger brother of mine is driving this car and it develops a miss one day out of the blue. Cylinders 1 and 4 are definitely not firing, and they both share the same tower on the coil pack. Plugs and wires are good. This should be an easy fix!
This car has the "Magnavox" type of ignition system with the three coils in one unit on top and the control (?) module on the bottom.
He replaced the top half of the module and everything was fine once again. But while doing so, one of the wires got snagged around a screw and its insulation was damaged. The system somehow put up with this and ran for quite some time before the car just dropped dead and stalled out later that day. Examining the potting compound showed that the bottom half of the unit had simply overheated. A new lower module was obtained and the car fired up again as soon as I was sure no more wires were being pinched. It was not running properly, and somehow it turned out that two spark plug wires were swapped. I fixed that.
Now it definitely runs better, but it is not right. It starts easily. The exhaust smells heavily of gasoline, it lacks power, and is consuming way too much gasoline while running. Given that two plug wires were somehow in the wrong places, I can't help but think that some of the other wiring (what goes under the module) may be incorrect. The instructions that came with the coil portion aren't unquestionably clear as to which wires go where. It shows two possible configurations, and I simply don't know which one is correct.
Any help would certainly be appreciated. I think what is really needed at this point would be a description of what wires go where when connecting the coil module to the lower portion. I'm hoping that this little wiring disaster hasn't blown something else...
William