Ok fellow mustang lovers please help me. I have a 66 coupe with a 289 slightly modded. Anyway, the problem is it just wont fire. It ran out of gas today and suddenly it just wont fire. I towed it to a gas station, filled it with gas and it fired right up only to suddenly die about 100 yards from home. The plugs, wires, dist cap, condenser, and points have all been replaced in the last week. Also, it arcs really bad when it tries to fire and you touch the distributor, which I see as a problem. They may be related or may not. Think it could answer the backfire problem too. Anyway, can anyone give me advice?

 

it sound if you could have one or both of the problems, If you ran out of gas it could have sucked up soot from your tank and clogged you fuel filter. You may also have to prime you carb with gas, try to fill you float bolws and keep cranking until gas starts pumping from the fuel pump. look into the carb and see if you get a good squirt from the jets.
Get a shock from the wires on your dizzy cap can mean poor or dirty cap rotor or cheap
spark plug wires. You want the spark across the plugs, if there too much resistance it will spart to the next best thing, (your hand)

 

And that never feels good...

 

What do you mean by "arcing"....

If you are getting visible sparks, this is at least PART of your problem, Probably ALL of your problem.

Where is this arching happening?

Cap?
Wires?

What kind of distributor,

Stock?
HEI?
MSD?

If you are running a HEI style setup, (with the coil in the cap), I would guess that the ground strap is not in place.