Ok, sounds odd I know.

ok so engine specs this may help a bit. 12A w/ racing beat intake and 465cfm holley carb.

I have a Crane Cam's HI-6 running my leads, worked fine till yesterday morning. So there's no ignitor on the leads. running two coils 1 each for the leads, trailing works fine.

I can start it and drive and whatever until it reaches operating temp. Then at the first stop where the rpm will drop (or slow down) the rpm drops significantly and its as if the leads are not working at all, which happens to be obvious as when I pull the plug on the single trailing coil, the engine dies. while running on trailing it will run just poor acceleration and loud loud exhaust. it'll even start again just on the trailing.

I've swapped back to a factory ignitor, and the same thing. runs fine until it warms up, then idle drops and leads are gone. I'm thinking it may have something to do with a poor signal from the pickups. This I noticed from the status light on the HI-6 flickering when just the trailing was active. I attpeted to start unising just leads, and it would start, run for a few seconds, and the status light would blink along with poor firing then stall.

do I need a new magnetic pickup ? or a whole new distributor ? as I know my ignitors and HI-6 and coils are fine I don't really want to pay to replace them if at all possible.

 

sounds like the magnetic pickup..

 

Pickup could have a fractured coil wire that his opening up after heating. Check pickup coil resistance with an ohmmeter before and after warmup; you shouldn't see any appreciable change.

Could also be a connector that has "sprung" slightly and is not making good contact after heatup.

 

Might it be possible to swap the lead and trailing magnetic pickups for testing purposes ?

should I look to replace the whole distributor, or just the mag-pickup.

what kind of costs should I expect in either situation, obviously the mag-pickup would be cheaper than a complete unit.

The diagram I have from blackdragonauto does not picture the contents of the distributor internals with any great detail.

Is there a mazda part number I should look for ? I do live very close to a dealership.

 

You could swap, but you'd have to re-time, and I don't know if you could get both lead and trail to shift timing enough (you'd be advancing one ~20 deg, retarding the other the same).

The coil pack is the only electronic part of the dizzy except for the ignitors; the rest is purely mechanical and should not see a significant thermal reaction.

Maybe your coil-reluctor gap is right on the edge, and heating puts it out of reach, but the cure for that is to replace the coil pack anyway. have you checked the gap yet?

Mazdatrix has OEM FB pickup plates listed; not cheap at $181.
http://www.mazdatrix.com/getprice.as...m=24-3140-N236
Scrounging a used one from the boneyard or the forums here would probably be a better testing solution.

 

Sound like it would have to be one of the following:

- mag pickup
- faulty coil(s)
- faulty wiring

Did you check in to what the status light means? Maybe it points to a poor signal coming in or something wrong with the load (coils) on the output. That light might help you track down where the problem is.