MTFCA Forum

Rebuilding my coil box, but found two coils are leaking tar. Does this mean they are overheating and probably bad?

As a new Forum member, wouldn't hurt to have them all checked. Common faults..... capacitor leaks, coil points wear, lose calibration ,and get stuck with debris.

I got excited thinking you had 25 coils laying around....

as long as the test and calibrate fine I wouldn't worry about them.

Chances are that your coils are not the original ones provided when the car was built. Different owners during the years had their hands into it. Changing and replacing things leaking. Melted outside the box tar usually indicates an overheated coil could be due to a bad timer, shorted timer wire, bad internal wiring.

Does it appear as if the tar leaked out recently? The coil is most likely 100 years old. The tar may have leaked out 75 years ago. How bad is it? If it works fine, I would continue to use it.

Re-wiring the car also. The harness, coil box, and coils appear to be unmolested to me.
Worn brittle and bare wires everywhere.
Intermittent no start, but when it decides to start runs smoothly.