This is the goofiest thing I have ever seen. My slant 6 has developed a miss on #6 cylinder. The plugs, wires, cap and rotor are all only about 2 weeks old.

Now when I pull the #6 plug wire off of the distributor the engine runs the same. Now when I move the wire to within 3/4 to 1/2 an inch to the distributor the spark will jump the gap and the engine will stop missing.

Now if I plug the wire into the cap it will miss again. Then if I remove the wire from the distributor but allow the spark to jump the gap the engine doesn't miss.

What's going on here? If it's able to jump the huge gap I don't understand why it can't transfer when the wire is directly attached to the distributor cap?

You have a fouled plug on #6.
There are or were 'Snake Oil ' salesman at the cars shows selling a devise that connected on the dist cap coil terminal and to the coil wire. The demonstation was impressive. The demo motors idle would speed up when the devise was installed. This devise does the same as what you were doing when created the gap from the wire to the plug. I think what happens, it causes the voltage to step up enough to fire your fouled plug and better fire the demo motors dirty plugs better.
You may need a hotter plug on #6 hole.

Cecil

Well that makes a little sense. I removed the plug and cleaned it but it was pretty fouled from not firing. I still think this is kind of odd.

When you hold the plug wire a distance away from the terminal on the cap, you are forcing the coil to send more voltage to jump the gap. The extra voltage if giving a better, 'hotter' spark, firing the cylinder. (see response at ss.com)

If cleaning the terminals doesn't fix it, your options are weak coil, bad cap, wire, or plug. Is the #6 plug gapped the same as the other 5?

-S/6

I should add that forcing the voltage to increase by increasing the gap like this stresses the coil and will shorten its life. It will also cause crossfiring and jumping to ground to occur more easily.

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I've been calling it as i see it for my entire life and that's not about to change. Take it or leave it.