I'm hyping myself to finally buy a new pickup coil and take the distributor out of my '86 SE, and since I'm already in there, should I look into a new cap and rotor? I don't know how to tell if they're bad or not. For context: The car was running fine and died randomly while running, no movement on tach when cranking, tested for resistance on pickup coil and it is telling me there's an open loop.

EDIT: could I just buy a whole new distributor with a new cap and rotor and coil? I feel like that would only do good.

[This message has been edited by Additivewalnut (edited 02-24-2020).]

Usually it's the ICM that fails... but if your pickup coil is testing bad, I don't see the point of buying a whole new distributor. Pickup coils are cheap... and besides, the new distributors come with no-name ICMs with dubious quality/durability.

If you're concerned about your cap and rotor, find some images online of what bad ones look like... or post images here of what yours look like so we can see 'em.