Awww yea, got the truck running again

"MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s" (mastermario) 07/19/2014 at 19:34 • Filed to: None

1

0

I never posted back when it broke down, but basically it died on me at a stop light. I got it started again but it ran really rough and I pulled it off to the side of the road where it pomptly died and wouldn't restart. Ended up having to get a tow truck to get it home.

Initially I thought it was a fuel pump since I had replaced the distributor, plugs, and fuel filter recently. So my dad and I replace the fuel pump and try starting it, still nothing, it cranks but won't start. Hmmm...let's check if we have spark. So my dad disconnects the distributor wire and has me crank the engine. Yup..we have spark. Weird. We have spark, we have fuel, and we have compression (we had just checked this a month ago when the plugs were replaced).

So I go to the interweb and do some research. Can't be any electronic control issues since we are getting spark at the distributor...can't really find anything else that could explain what it is. While I'm doing this my dad and I are talking and he mentions something about the spark from the distributor being kind of weak. WHAT!? You seriously are just mentioning this...so we go check to see if the plugs have any spark...nope...nada...niente...nothing.

Go get a new coil pack from advanced...boom fires right up. Apparently my dad didn't have his thinking cap on today that he didn't remember that the spark still has to jump a gap in the distributor and a spark plug so if it's too weak it won't do it.

But hey I got to spend the day wrenching on the truck with my dad and got it running...that's a win in my book.

Next weekend is a whole new project for it though...we will be swapping a more stout transmission inplace of the current one.