
EMPI Distributor Cap Defect
Warned is forearmed. Today, lots of distributor caps are plastic. Bosch still uses a very old material for its caps known as Bakelite. You may recall other Bakelite items, home telephone casings and electrical insulators.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakelite
Anyway, while we're at Sebring fighting an on-again, off-again fuel starvation problem in one of our Webers, when we did have the engine running, we had odd misfires. We traced it to this EMPI cap. Two of the four electrical contacts inside the cap were partially blocked with plastic "flash" on the contact side. Flash is the term for a thin amount of material extending from a molding or casting.
This photo is not the clearest, and most of the flash has been worn away, but there was enough left to peel it back with your fingernail. Common plastics are prone to flashing on older molds. The moral of the story is if you have plastic caps, inspect them first. If you have good quality Bosch Bakelite, you have nothing to worry about.
FJC