Guys,
I thought I had this one licked the other night when I switched plugs, but I think I treated the symptom and not the cause. Can someone please tell me a quick way to tell whether a coil is firing? I know, sounds stupid, but I have an MSD coil-per-cylinder setup on my BBC. Cylinders 2,4,6,8 are firing away when I hook up a timing light on each of them. Cylinders 1,3,5,7 are not firing or fire very sporadic. I'm checking with a timing light on each wire - will that give me a true reading on whether the coil is firing regardless of the plug's status (good, fouled, etc.)? Come to think of it, I think I'll unplug a wire from the plug on the passenger side and test my question while I wait for some of the gurus to chime in...

I'm tracing ground wires to the coils and everything I can think of, but I'm having this nightmare that it is an MSD ignition problem and this is an expensive setup...

Thanks all...