I didnt take my manifold off, was bit of a tight squeeze, but was managable.

well, I have greasy blood soaked knuckles and I have been cursing for the past hour, my wife hates me and i feel like punching a hole through the brick wall in the garage! hmm, all this to save $180 in labour... yeah, kinda feels good

well,its out now. I just need to get the new one back in and I am sure i will connect the new spark leads back up 'out of sequence' and have the incorrect firing order, but yeah, its all part of the fun!

have a beer for me.

cheers, J.

If you have an open circuited lead and leave it too long the coilpack may fail too. The extra output required to jump the break in the lead stresses them out. Same deal with coils on EA etc.
Easiest way to check leads on the AU's is to check the resistance between leads 1&6, 2&5, 3&4. Its normally about 30k ohms. If you get an open one, remove it from the coil and recheck resistance.

Smally - that sounds like what has happened... when I was removing the leads from the old coil pack - #5 was very very loose, I thought iw was just sitting there.. I may have bumped it in my efforts to remove the pack, but I would be 80% sure it has been like that for how ever long... probably what has stuffed it..

I was thinking about putting it all back with the old coil pack and leads, you have great timing. It was probably stuffed anyways as you say.

J.,

Thankyou to everyone who helped me out with this problem. Its all back together now and running sweeter than it ever has before. I am thinking that it has been running on 5 cylinders for a long time and it was noticeable only when the coil pack fried and droped down to 4 cylinders, or at best two weak cylinders! I didnt realise how much power this thing had until I took it for a test drive after the work I did on it.. did a U-turn to come back home and I smoked the tyres with ease (smae amount of imput from me) - so clearly it is way up on power now

I should have tweaked earlier, all makes perfect sense now.. My wife has been telling me the fuel ecconomy sucked - may kill two birds with one coil pack

Cheers, James.