Stutter, misfire, hesitation...

[SL#63]

Whatever you want to call it, I need some guidance!

Car is a 1965 Polara with 440/727 from a 1973 Charger. Points ignition, Edelbrock 750/electric choke(recent rebuild)...
Car was sitting for a while, and had received some "repairs" before I bought it.
I recently installed plugs and wires (old wires had numerous header burns, plugs were badly carboned up and had wildly varying gaps) Cap and rotor appear new. I also replaced the distributor with a remanned unit (lobes were badly worn, points burned, and vacuum advance was non-op so I figured why not). I have also installed one of the transistorized voltage regulators as I was getting nearly 18 volts at the battery while the engine was running.

Car ran great after plugs/wires/carb rebuild. Problem began after distributor and VR were swapped out. It idles fine, but has what appears to be a slight miss when revved in park...when driven there is a massive miss/stumble that happens @ 2500 - 3000 RPM! Tach needle seems to drop out right before the motor backfires and falls to 1000 or so RPMs.
I have tried swapping the old units back in (old VR with old and new disty, new VR with old and new disty). I have even swapped out coils to no avail. I have been trying to find similar symptoms in past threads, but most people seem to have swapped to the electronic ignition systems. I am leaning toward ignition as the cause due to my observation of the tach needle, vs a fuel problem (although I have read a few 'lean miss' threads).

Some things I plan to check when the sun comes up, and the noise won't annoy the neighbors:
Voltage in/out at the ballast resistor, battery, coil and VR when the miss occurs.
wiring to and from low voltage side of coil and ballast (a few spliced connections have me concerned).

Anything else I should be looking at? It's been a long time (25 years or so) since I've had a car with points, carburetor, etc. and my memory is quite rusty!

Update:
Found a broken insulator in the Ballast resistor and swapped that out for a new one. I can't reliably detect a voltage change that coincides with the miss. The car seems to run a bit better after the ballast resistor was changed, but I still see the tach needle dip every so often (both at idle and when revved). The motor just doesn't seem to rev very smoothly when driving (although it seems to have plenty of power). I've been swapping parts back in and out, and have run a new wire from the ballast to the coil...still no changes!

[wilks3]

Did you check the dwell on the new distributor? If thats ok, run a jumper wire from pos battery to incoming side of ballast. This eliminates all wiring,connections and switches that feed power to coil. For that matter,run
the jumper directly to pos side of coil. You won't hurt the points while out testing. How did you set timing? Unhook vacuum-advance, set timing to about 14* at crank, should be close enough to run. The coil should be for a ballast set-up. Not all coils have same resistance.
New fuel? Fuel pump ok? Water in tank? Fuel pump rod should be 3.25" long, is it worn? Is there gunk on the pick-up sock in tank?
Vacuum leaks? Look over closely, you never know.
Points suck. I would switch to Pertronix conversion as soon as possible.
Hope any of this helps!

[SL#63]

Okay...the coil is definately bad. I reinstalled the one that was in the car when I got it and the miss is very pronounced at idle as well as up in the rev range. I now have one that is marked "use with electronic ignition" on the case. It runs better, but still not great. I suspect I need to buy the 'correct' coil, but the local places want $50 - $60!!!

Any recommendations for a less expensive coil that will work? I'm not ready to make the jump to all electronic ignition just yet.

[kruzer]

I've had good luck with either a Accell or Crane Hyfire