The Fatboy chronicles continue. On the way to our new, local brew pub (within three miles on a dirt road) with my TX brother and nephew from CA, discovered bucking/surging and a lack of power to traverse the hills, 3rd gear hills turned into 2nd, 2nd to 1st... and so on. So as expected we finished the adventure and enjoyed a few beverages, what else could I do with such a diverse crowd.
The following day evaluated the situation always thinking about worse case. Pulled distributor cap wires, one by one, #4 the culprit, nephew was not impressed that I did it with my bare hand but no worse for the wear. Not a fuel issue as #3 was running fine. Checked spark at cap, all good, checked spark at plug had spark, hmm. Pulled plug, plug was perfect color, gap was perfect, had spark to plug, hmmm.... At this point I am in panic mode as I am thinking valves/head issue, checked valves, they were spot on from where they were set last summer, no signs of trouble. So I pull out the as of yet unused compression test equipment and do a quick cold test on cylinder #4, 140 psi, okay, I think? Matches what I had on that cylinder originally, makes sense only driven Fatboy less than two thousand miles since rebuild.
At this point feel better about the valves but still scratching my head

. Son #2 drops by and suggests testing the wire resistance and compare to a know good one, tell him I already checked spark at all locations, not the issue. He insists, IT guys think they are more worldly than Engineers... turns out he is. The resistance in the #4 wire was very high, while I had spark at all the right locations the quality of the spark was poor. After rechecking spark at the cap, nice white/blue spark, at the plug an orange-ish/yellow weak spark. So I did what anyone would do to save face, told my son that I didn't have my glasses on at the time... he walked away saying "Sure, okay Pop."
New plug wires on order (assume other wires not far behind), should have by Wednesday. NAPA indicated that Belden are the best they offer, we shall see. By the way cut up the bad wire and found significant corrosion in the first two to three inches of the wire on the plug side. Disappointed as these were Bosch wires that were only a few years old.
Look forward to your visit on 6/2 Colin.