Need help! 72 c10 keeps dying

[britski]

I have a 1972 Chevy C10, 350 2wd.
Recently it starts up fine but when I get around 2 miles down the road it will die. After trying to start it a couple it times it will barely turn over almost like the battery is dead but it hasn't been turned over enough to drain the battery. After I leave it for 45 minutes to 1 hour it will start back up no problem. It has done this three times and it dies at about the exact same distance from my house each time.
When it dies it immediately does so. No sputtering or misfiring. Just stops.
I have a few ideas of what it may be but I need opinions before I just start blindly replacing stuff.

[dmack91]

You might try driving it without the gas cap on. If the vent system is plugged, it could start pulling a vacuum, and eventually (maybe in, say, 2 miles) have enough vac to stop the fuel from flowing from the tank to the pump.

[bobs409]

This may sound crazy but if you have HEI, check the power wire at the distributor. My truck drove me CRAZY for the longest time with the same symptom. It would die about 1/2 mile from my house, and I mean DIE just like I turned the key off. I still don't know how it knew to do this in the same spot all the time. I replaced all kinds of things; coil, module, cap, rotor just trying to rid it of this miserable problem.

I'd pull over and look things over, mess with the wires a bit and it would start back up and be fine for a while. Never realizing it was this wire or perhaps the solderless terminal on it. I still don't know exactly but after replacing that wire completely, the problem was GONE!

Good luck!

[britski]

I did replace the coil wire thinking that might have been the problem and it still does it.
I have read that it could be possible that the coil is faulty and over heating. That causes it to shut off and when it cools its restarts. Is this also possible?

[sandking]

I would try the gas cap as dmack mentioned.

[britski]

Well I figured I would update for anyone that runs in to this same problem. Turns out the problem was in the distributor. It would just quit working for no real reason and at times the coil would quit. The coil issue was most likely the negative post going out from the distributor going out.
Needless to say, everything I researched said that the points are very unreliable so it has been converted to an HEI set up now.

[dmack91]

Glad you finally got it figured out. Electrical gremlins suck.

[cdowns]

the thing ran for 40years and you think points are unreliable???

[britski]

Yeah sorry, let me rephrase that. Unreliable isn't the word. Known to cause some headaches and require more maintenance is what I am looking for.

[bobs409]

Personally, I've always had good luck with points and many of my cars still have them. As long as they don't get too much voltage and are set correctly, they should work just fine.

The nice thing about points is they usually let you know when they are on their way out by running lousy unlike HEI, it just up and dies! That's why I carry a spare module at all times.