You're giving me some hope Art (along with the other message below from Machine Man and Hillbilly). I will set up the timing light right after I go over every connector and battery cable in the car this weekend. I'm thinking my spark light could be wrong and that is where I should be concentrating now. Resister in the rotor?? Never heard of that but I have a new one on the shelf and will try it but of course I will have to smash open the old one just to see for myself - this sounds too perfect an urban legend. I must pull out my notes again from 2009 in that car's glovebox because this is all playing out strangly the same as then and my memory is it just went away but maybe there was something I did then that changed the behaviour.
Robb McC