Hi I have a 1980 ford f100 with the 300 inline 6 in it. I recently had a starting issue. So I went and replaced everything. Distributor, coil, plugs, wires and ignition control module. And it's starts but weird thing is. If I push the wire from the coil to the center of the distributor cap all the way down setting it in place. It will shut the truck off. But if it's just barley resting on the center connector for the distributor cap then it stays running. Any ideas on what could cause this cause I'm stuck

 

Do you still have the old coil wire and distributor cap? The problem seems to be one or both of those parts. Temporarily try the old ones and see what happens.

If that fixes it, your new parts were obviously defective. Do NOT get replacements of the same brand from the same vendor. Could be similarly defective parts from the same batch sitting on the shelf, waiting patiently for you.

 

I have never had that happen on a car or truck engine, but I have had that happen on a small engine. It would not run unless you took the sparkplug wire off and let the spark jump from the wire to the plug. Then it would run. Turned out to be a bad sparkplug.
If you haven't thrown any of your old parts away yet, put them back on one at a time and see what happens.

 

Interesting. The defective plug must have required higher voltage to fire. Forcing the spark to jump the extra gap would have caused the coil output to increase. I’ll have to keep that in my bag of tricks for troubleshooting an ignition problem.

With that in mind, I’m still leaning towards a defective coil wire or distributor cap. Maybe try the rotor, too? I’m thinking if the problem was confined to a single cylinder (plug or plug wire), the engine would still run on the other cylinders, although poorly. But if it won’t run at all, I’d look for something affecting all cylinders.