" Rust" in the distributor

[dodge freak]

Ok I know it is not "rust" but not sure what to call it, it does look like rust. My pick coil in the dist. went bad the other day, but it was only 2 years old and I drive the car only 7 months a year, and I drive only 5000 miles a year, if that. All over the reluctor there was a rust looking coating that I had to sand away, I will buy a new one. The pick plate was clean but the coil had it too.  The coil check ok with a ohm meter, 275 so I clean it up with sand paper. It ran much better , before it would miss very bad after 5 mins, but was fine if you waited 20 Min's then ran bad after 5 Min's again. So I replace it with a brand new one , problem is gone,  Any ideas how I could stop this from happening again? It does have a high power msd 7al spark box, before I had only a 6 a msd for 8 years and never had it happen before. Somebody said to drill some holes in the dist. cap Have anybody done this.  The cap was clean but the tip of the rotor had it too. I thought they only gave out not just miss when hot, and it did check ok with a ohm meter, specs are 230-300 ohms and the brand new one had 270 ohms so that does not mean anything I guess.

[Plumcrazy]

The reluctor is bare metal so depending on where you live some rust will occur.

Checking the pickup coil's resistance only works if you do it while the problem is actually happening.
Since replacing the pickup coil seems to have fixed it, you've probably solved that problem..  I doubt the rust you saw was the cause of your probems.