Running crappy

[palallin]

On the 19th, I posted this to the "What did you do to your truck today" thread:

Originally Posted by palallin

Well, my truck woke up on the wrong side of the bed and ran crappy all day. Felt and sounded like it was running on maybe 6 cylinders or less. Exhaust smelled of less-than-fully-burnt gas.

So, when I got home from work, I started pulling things apart to see what was amiss. I noticed that the hose on the breather line from the air cleaner to the valve cover was separated from the steel elbow, so I pulled the cleaner off and then tried to pull the fitting out of the valve cover. It pulled the top half of the grommet off with it, so I had to pull the valve cover to fish the bottom pieces of the grommet out of the baffle. (I discovered in the process that I need new valve cover gaskets, but that's a project for another day.) I need to get a new grommet, obviously.

Then I pulled the distributer cap off (HEI). The center contact is burned, and the 8 wire contacts are pretty nasty, too. The center contact and the rotating contact on the rotor are also in bad shape. PITButt getting the cap off so close to the firewall.

So the next step is to buy a new cap and rotor. I don't know how much a coil is, but I think I might get one of those, too. These parts have bee there at least since 2003, maybe longer.

I am hopeful that this will cure the problem, but, even if it doesn't, it needed to happen anyway.

Well, it helped, but it didn't completely solve the problem: the truck still idles rough, stumbles, surges, just not as badly.

It sounds/smells like the gas isn't fully burning and sounds sort of like it needs to clear its throat--I bet many of you know what I mean. It may be plugs or wires, I suppose, and I will pull the plugs as soon as I can.

The day before, I filled the tank from nearly empty--I noticed no problems the rest of that day, but it was the next morning when, out of the blue, it ran poorly. I guess it could be some bad gas.

What else should I check? It's been years since I had to fool with this sort of thing, and I don't trust my memory.