24 years

That's how long my pick up coil lasted. The car just shut off and wouldn't re-start about a block from home. Towed it home and half an hour later I tried starting it, it started right up. Let it sit till the next day and it would only crank over, not start...no spark. Checked for 12V at the distributor..check good. Ohmed out the secondary coil...checked good. Ohmed out the pick up coil, checked from each lead to ground checked good but from lead to lead it was open, should have been 500-15,000 ohms. New pick up coil installed and all is well again. All in all, about 3 hours of work.

that's quite a long time. then again, I don't know what the average life of a pickup coil is.

+1 for this post tho, because it will definitely help other troubleshoot a similar problem.