webrest7 wrote:In a time and place far away my Elan fell victim to fire due to that ridiculous positioning of the coil.
Placing electrical components underneath leaky Weber's was not one of Chapman's great engineering innovations.
Luckily I managed to put it out before the flames took out the entire car.
I didn't muck about the coil was repositioned up on the flat section above the footwell during repair. No way it can cause issues there.
Also have a placed one of those available rubber boots over the coil connections.
All other fixes are just messing about as far as I am concerned.
Take it from someone who has been there, it ain't pretty if you are the chosen one.
A correctly installed coil should not spark, and isn't a source of ignition. While I wouldn't recommend it, you could douse the coil in petrol and it shouldn't ignite.
The distributor however is a different matter. There are two sources of ignition, the points and the gap between the rotor arm and the contacts in the distributor cap. I have personally blown the cap off a distributor that I managed to cover in petrol while fiddling around with the front carb. Fortunately the bonnet was open, and I had dried most of the petrol off, but the bang frightened the life out of me and the cap was a gonner.
The problem is that it is difficult to move the distributor. I guess the only solution is to make sure the carbs don't leak, or use a distributor-less EFI solution.