Chevrolet Repair: Engine misses and buck on hills, torque converter clutch, new distributor cap

Question
95 Chevy 3.1 125k: Engine misses on hills and "bucks" when I try to accelerate (on hills only)I did a total tune-up about two years ago, including cleaning things that needed it. I wonder about bad gas and/or fuel filter. I put injector cleaner in every other tankful. Please start with simple things first. !) Bad plugs? 2) Wires? 3) Cylinder? The wires are supposed to be "lifetime". It's due for new plugs & I usually put on a new distributor cap too. I also want to tell readers about PartsAmerica.com--I save up to 50% on parts by going thru their site. They hook you up with a local affiliate (parts store). You MUST mention PartsAmerica to get the discount. Better yet, print out the page and bring it with you. I've saved hundreds of $. P.S. Wayne: It's great thare are people like you to share their knowledge. I'm low income and have learned to do my own work. It's diagnosing the problem that gives me trouble. Why the f--k do they put computers in cars nowadays?

Answer
Hey Debee,

  When your vehicles transmission is in overdrive and the torque converter clutch is on it amplifies driveability problems 10 fold.  It really sounds like an ignition missfire to me.  After road testing vehicles for various problems in the last 20 years I have learned that ignition missfires are pretty much always very abrupt.  Fuel system issues are very smooth and linear like a sag or wave.  Ignition missfires typically cause vibration in the steering wheel and a machine gun type repetitiveness.
 I would take a double look at your coils and wires and such.  You might have a wire that has rubbed through somewhere and is arcing under load.
 Why do they put computers on cars?  Fuel economy and emissions management.  Thats pretty much it.  The idea behind engine efficiency is to maintain a fuel ratio of 14.7-1 lbs of air to lbs of fuel  (yes pounds of air!lol).  A carburetor is based on physics and not electronics.  A carburetor is a very linear way to manage fuel control.  Ports and a venturi that basically help push air in relative to air pressure (or engine vacuum, depends on how you look at it.  As a technician we know there is no complete vacuum so everything that resembles a vacuum is actually called a low pressure)
   A engine management computer is able to monitor and self diagnose (albiet crappy achiac forms of) problems.  Your 95 is OBD2 (early cuz 94 was the pilot year) and has a very sophisticated form of self diagnosis.  It may send us down the wrong road but at least it isolates circuits and errors and gives us a fighting chance.
  I have alot of respect for people that do their own repairs.  Alot of licensed technicians roll their eyes and chuckle when they talk about shade tree mechanics but its so hypocritical when you think about it.  I mean really, isnt that how they would have started out?  
 Not everyone has the 70-100 bucks an hour to spend on car repairs or the 100-140 for electrical diagnosis either.  My shop is 79.95 for mechanical and 99.00 for advanced drivability and electronics.  It seems so expensive but people soon forget about the 500k worth of equipment I need to service everything from a ford fiesta to a saab 9-5.  I write, estimate and process a fair share of invoices myself and shake my head when I look at it but as expensive as it is more often that not we run at a loss when it comes to drivability.  You can nail one in 20 min but hte next one eludes you for hours.
 I hope you have good luck with your 95 and I hope I was helpful.  It is difficult to diagnose without the hands on but it really sounds like an ignition missfire on your description.  I had a dork jump all over me and got my first bad review out of nearly a thousand answers today.  I accidentally hit 'homework question' instead of forwarding to my email account and it just fired it off.  He got really upset and called me a jerk and that I didn't know anything.  The ironic thing is that i knew the answer to his problem and was trying to repair my mistake when his nasty email came in.  I was seriously thinking of packing it in when I read it but you can't just label everyone based on one loser.

Wayne