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Followup To
Question -
Steve,
I replaced the Distributor cap, rotor, coil, and plug wires. It still is running very poorly. I have to keep my foot on the gas to keep it running. I cannot find any obvious vacuum leaks. It spits out black smoke (I assume from unburnt fuel). Any other suggestions?
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Steve,
I have a 1985 Chevy K-10 4X4 pickup. It has a V8-350 and is carborated. The coil is mounted in the top of the ditributor and has HEI ignition (module is inside the distributor). It is misfiring badly.
As a little background, I was picking up a ton of rock about a week ago. The truck drove fine all morning. Once the rock was loaded on the truck it started fine but as soon as I pulled out on the highway it stalled. It restarted briefly before stalling again. It would turn over but not run. I checked to see that fuel was getting to the carburator and it was. I changed out the plugs (although the set that was in there had less than 1000 miles on them). Once the plugs were changed the truck started up and ran fine. However, it is now running very poorly again (misfiring).
It has new plugs, and the wires, rotor, and distributor cap visually look ok. Is it possible that I have bad components in the distributor? Could the coil be going bad?
I have thought about buying a reman distributor from a local parts store and replacing the entire thing. I feel pretty confident that I can do this with the help of the Haynes manual but I don't want to throw money at the truck and not fix the problem. Do you have any suggestions?
Answer -
I would not replace the distributer right away, what you describe does sound like a possible coil going bad, especially since it seems to get worse after running for a bit, but I would also check the ignition wires, with the truck running ( poorly ) at idle, remove 1 wire at a time and see if by removing that wire the truck runs even worse, if yo come to 1 wire that makes no difference when pulled from the plug, you have a bad wire, this can also cause a misfire, use an insulated pair of pliers to remove each wire. as for the distributer, as along as the shaft does not have excessive play it should be fine, the module is located just under the rotor and is easy to get to, but I do not think this is your problem as if the module was bad it would not be running, hope this helps
AnswerThese type of problems can be very difficult to diagnose this way as you can imagine, is it running this way all the time now or only after it warms up fully ? considering the age of this vehicle another place you could look is the converter, make sure this is not plugged up, I am going to think about this some more and I will get back to you, if you can think of any other info that might help be sure to let me know
