I just noticed a bad miss my car had. After looking around I found that a hole burned right through the center of the distributor cap where the coil terminal is. Any idea what can cause this?

 

Looking at your parts list, I will assume you had a quality cap & rotor.
Spark will always find the easiest path. Now this might not be exactly related to your problem but on my 95 GMC Sierra truck (305 TBI), over the years I have found the factory stock coil wire corroded at the cap coil connection, and most recently with a completely new replacement dist, cap, & rotor the spark arcs through the rotor to the center post on the distributor and grounds the spark out. Now I carry a spare rotor.
Do you use dielectric grease?

 

Msd cap and rotor. I always use dielectric grease as well.

 

Isn't there a carbon "button" there that makes contact with the rotor?
That must have burned out.

 

I will guess that over time that button wore down to the point that there was no longer good contact. Then it started arcing there, increasing resistance. The more it did it, the worse it got, until it burned through.

 

Mine has the smaller hei cap. No carbon button.

 

Probably too much plug gap.

 

Your answer is here:
http://garage.grumpysperformance.com...gnitions.2798/

 

Great article. Thanks to everyone for all the replies.