racing. flea.. I have been using the electronic dissy and his 3 OHM coils from Sport Car parts in knoxvile. tenn.. about $120 total for both. for last few years.. later bc

i have an aldon red distributor electronic. im going to swap coils once it cools off outside

I had a false flag 'Lucas Sport' coil fail in northern Calif. on the way home from MMW 2008 in Irvine.  This phony Lucas item only worked for 2,000 miles.  Replaced it with a 40 year old coil with known resistance.  End of problems.

Since I have only bought Pertronix (Made in USA) coils....

Still have the 2nd phony 'Lucas Sport' coil on the shelf to remind me.

The only reliable way I found to test a coil is to replace it with a known good one....

IME coils do not seem to cause the problems you describe.  Rather, they allow the engine to idle and run at low load quite happily but when asked the question - foot down and rising revs as you try to get past that 18 wheeler - they just give up producing a bad miss or intermittent cutting out.  

And, they're cheap, Minis are usually happy with any generic coil from the local parts shop.   Just make sure you know/get one with the correct running voltage (resistor type or not).

Cheers, Ian

Is it electronic ignition? If so that’s most likely the problem. Spark should be blue, if yellow could be weak coil, there are two coil resistance types, one for a ballasted power feed, one for not. You need a DVM to test for coil resistance, and to check for coil power when it cuts out. Good luck.

ive been having this problem . sometimes the car runs great. other times wont fire but cranks over.  even with ether sprayed. ive put new plugs in it. one day it was running good and just stopped. . cranked cranked and nothing. a few days later it ran for 5 mins and boom, nothing. i see spark but wonder if its stong enough to over come the resistance of the plugs. car has a gold lucas coil. engine is a 1380 with a after manrket distributor. timing is proper.  this is a hit and miss problem. car runs fine for a while then nothing or nothing at all.
how do i test the coil