Well, almost a year later, I think I have solved this mystery. After the initial episode last May, I wound up disconnecting the condenser since it was just a single wire connection. By the way, the condenser helps remove the "ignition noise" that you sometimes hear in your AM radio when there is not a strong station close enough. Since I am only a FM-type there was no concern about the ignition noise. Anyhow, back to the problem... This seemed to help for about 6 months. Then the fuse started blowing again but very infrequently - once a month...until a few weeks ago. In a one week period, I went through about 2 dozen fuses. All of these occurred while driving down the road. Finally, one evening after going through a few fuses on the way home, I needed to go back out to the grocery store. I could not get the VX started due to fuses popping. Raised the hood and pulled all of the ignition coil wires. No fuse pop! Started replacing the coil wires one at a time. The last one caused a fuse pop. Looked around the coil area and everything looked good, except for the accumulation of dirt on top of the engine and coil wire. Then I noticed that the coil wire was actually touching the engine. So, bent the wire up a little and tried another fuse. Engine started! Went back and cleaned the engine and ignition wire, and found that the wire insulation had been removed presenting bare copper wire. I have now wedged a piece of high temperature plastic between the wire and engine as well as a plastic tywrap to hold the ignition wire away from the engine. Note that the subject ignition coil is the one nearest the air intake filter.

I suspect that over time, the combination of the accumulated dirt and the high temps had slowly rubbed the ignition wire insulation away, thus exposing the wire. When I unplugged the condenser wire last year, I must have move the wire enough to correct the problem temporarily.

So, I hope this is the end of this problem and the story will be helpful to others.

Now dealing with catalytic converter problem - see recent post.

Henry
(160K miles)