Hmm-mm, my 85 has the grounded "can" around the distributor, too.� Makes it very difficult to remove/replace distributor cap...annoying...I have fought with it for several minutes rather than easy snap off, snap on.� I replaced my radio with a newer one from a Honda Civic; maybe that radio has better filtering and suppression than the original radio so that I can delete the can....will give it a try anyway.

Rich
San Diego

--- On Wed, 4/13/11, David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET> wrote:

From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: radio whine - success, failure, success
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2011, 4:04 PM

At 05:55 PM 4/13/2011, John C... wrote:
>What is that grounded Shield Cylinder
>around some of the Distrubutors?
>I thought that was for the radio reception.
>but that's just a wild guess on my part.

It is.� How much difference it makes I can't say.� They built
military versions with more radio suppression I'm pretty
sure.� Frequency-modulation schemes like FM broadcast radio aren't
bothered by spark noise unless it's enough to melt the radio (so to
speak).� My '89 hasn't got one, but the '84 did.� I never pulled it
off to see the difference on AM.

Yrs,
d