is trailing ignition coil the front one?
 

according to a you tuber, the ignition coil towards the rear is the leading one (yellow blue wire). I do'nt like this. Shouldn't the leading coil be the front one and the trailing one be the rear one since Mazda likes to keep things simple straight forward?

t g farrel said it doesn't matter. (Something else I don't like)

Reason I ask is I swapped out an old distributor cap because I was getting crazy misfire. Maybe I got the dist coil wires wrong during the swap? The newest dist cap center contact was worn all the way down. The older dist cap made things much worse.

Spark plugs front were oily. I replaced them with the best looking pair on old old plugs, and the engine seems to run fine now with the worn center dist cap.

It is better to appear to be an anonymous retard here, than the f@#$ up my engine.

well lets see, u don't like how mazda wired it, tim said it doesn't matter(and it don't) and u don't like that either, so, wtf else is there?

Look at the wires that run from the coils to the cap. Do they cross over each other at any place along their length? Or do they stay parallel?

I'll take that as it does NOT matter. And if it did matter, and I had it wrong the engine wouldn't run or it would run like crap. I just want to be sure.

As for "I don't like", how about I say "...it is not intuitively/logically apparent..." , "....fundamentally speaking..." , "...doesn't make sense..."

From the factory, the SA was set up with the Trailing coil closest to the front of the car.

Position doesn't really matter so long as the wires all reach... but the wiring does matter. Especially on the 80, where the ignition shuts down the trailing during acceleration to provide more unburned fuel to keep the thermal reactor hot.

Getting the primary side backwards on the 80 is... bad.

Mazda likely set up the leading closer to the engine and distributor (rearward position) to provide for shorter HV cables and therefore slightly less voltage drop to the all-important primary ignition... & since the leading coil also is the termination point for the Tach signal wire, they save a few inches in wire, which adds up when you build a couple hundred thousand cars.

But the actual difference for ONE car is minor.

the rear is the leading

what finally happened, swapped out an old dist cap, still ran bad, checked the plugs. Two fronts were black and wet, rears were healthy. Swapped out the fronts with some old plugs and it ran great. Swapped out the original dist cap from when it first ran bad, and it ran great.

Before all this I ordered a dist cap and rotor from autozone, they said delivery to home was 5 days. So I ordered in store pick up from o'reily which was next day. The autozone package arrived the next day. I thought fuck it, I'll keep both sets. Right now I have a great running engine and 2 sets of new plugs, dist caps, and dist rotors out of the car.

I don't understand why the front 2 plugs suddenly went bad? Was it the weather changing?

ps...the indash cd went kaput, bought a $20 dual from W Mart. It didn't sound as good as the 4 year old $140 JVC unit so I returned it. Sure wish I check the plugs 1st, and saved the $100 in parts to spend on a contemporary car stereo. Plus, when I changed the oil, I forgot the drain plug....so I've been fucing up left and right. I better hold off on replacing the stereo.

It's Mercury retrograde, I tell yah!

good call ! Is Mercury in Retrograde?: learn something new everyday

I will put off doing my taxes and the in dash until april 16 2018

didn't matter when I switched them around accidentally.

Saturn will go retrograde tomorrow!

Seems to me, you might hurry or jump around from one thing to another too much. Personally, I'd rather take a little more time, be thorough and do it right the first time vs. having to go back and do things over, or worse, cause additional damage just because I was in a rush.