There are wide contact distributor caps for sale on e-bay ( http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 59391&rd=1 ) that the seller claims were used on the Hyper-Pac engines. Were the distributor caps on these engines actually different?
Bob D

Wow, it's amazing what people will say to try to sell stuff on eBay.

No, the wide-contact distributor cap (2098765 black, and then 2444690 tan) was used with the narrow-contact rotor (2098770) together with a coil wire with a sturdier boot, as a '62 TSB fix for all '60-'62 difficult cold/wet starting caused by crossfire with the original 1889424 cap and 1889535 rotor. These items were used in factory production starting midyear '62 and ending in '67 or so with the reintroduction of the narrow-contact cap and wide-contact rotor.

I've experimented extensively with these caps. They work fine, just like a quality regular cap works fine. The main problem with the early 1889424 was that it was made out of a material sufficiently good for use on "up top" distributors on V8 engines, but not good enough to resist moisture-related problems on the low-mounted slant-6 distributor, especially without splash shielding (which the real early models didn't have). The initial fix (same cap material with wider contacts) was designed to make sure the nearest convenient electrical path was to a spark plug wire rather than along the cap's interior surface to ground. Then the black material was replaced with the much better tan material, then they found the new material was good enough that the wider contacts were no longer necessary.

That said, the idea of the wide-contact cap is a good one. It has the potential to cut down on cap and rotor contact wear especially with large amounts of advance and/or long-duration ignition sparks. Thing is, nobody that I'm aware of ever made these caps with nice brass or copper contacts, only cruddy aluminum. Sure, it was good enough for Mopar and it works OK, but brass or copper is better in every way.

Thanks for the information Dan. Interestingly the seller has changed the ad and it no longer mentions the Hyper-Pac. This is the old ad just so you don't think I'm delusional. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayI ... 4545492842
Bob D

I wonder if that's on account of I cut 'n' pasted my answer to your question into an eBay "Ask seller a question about this item" window...

Keep them honest!