Dale,
Thanks for all the thought and troubleshooting.� I apologize; I should have dug deeper before I posed the question I did a posts search for sputter and came up with one from Sept of last year.� The suggestion was to check the points gap.� I figured that HAD to be OK but I took a peek.� It turns out the solder on the blue wire broke (apparently on the way home from the shop) and the wire was making intermittent contact.� All I can say is, thank goodness for easy fixes.� Some fresh solder and now I am good to go.