Electrical demons are eating my very soul!

[shuttermutt]

Well, I thought maybe the problem had somehow magically fixed itself, but it seems that's not the case. Here's a summary from an earlier post...

"...every now and again the truck will just up and die like you turned the key off. I double-checked my HEI terminal and other connections, but I don't see anything else obvious.

I'm thinking it's electrical. I can't seem to find any rhyme or reason to it. It's done it while at an idle. It's done it at ~2000 rpm cruise. It's done it shortly off the line. It's done it afer 3 miles of non-stop driving. It's done it in a straight line. It's done it after turning a corner. It's done it when the engine's relatively cold. It's done it when the engine's at temperature.

It's done it in a boat. It's done it in a moat. It's done it in a can. It's pissing me off, Sam-I-Am!

Like I said, the engine doesn't stumble or freak out. It's just like you turn the key off. When I stick it in Park and hit the key, however, it fires right back up and we're off and running."

This evening, on my way home from work, I was cruising about 65 when, BAM! The engine had died, fired back off again, and backfired something fierce. It then proceeded to freak out for a couple of miles. Die. Neutral. Start it up. Die. Neutral. Start it up.

One very wierd thing happened one time during this fiasco that kind of freaked me out... it restarted by itself. Or at least I'm 90% sure it did. It died, I popped it neutral (remember, I'm on the stupid freeway here), and when I went to hit the starter, it was already running.

Sure, you're thinking, "It might have just cut out for a moment (as it's been known to do lately) and he just thought it was dead." Normally, I'd agree, but I was eyeballing the tach before I hit the starter to specifically avoid that problem and I could have sworn that sucker was sitting at dead-cold zero rpm.

Anyway, the problem went away after about a mile and it got me the rest of the way home without so much as a hiccup. Once there, I opened the hood and jiggled every damn wire I could find on that son-of-a-gun while the engine was running and it never even flinched. I jiggled the wires going to the starter, the HEI power lead (which we'll get back to in a moment), the battery cables, all along the wires that run around the front, all the wires at the firewall, and even wires running to the A/C compressor.

Then, I crawled up under the dash and started moving those wires. I tried moving all the wires around the fuse block, any wire I could touch under the dash, and even pulled up the driver's side carpet to wiggle those around. Then I wiggled, jiggled, and tapped the key, wrestled the steering wheel, and jangled the shifter around thinking it might be in there. All to no avail.

The only thing I can see that's even slightly strange is that while the power lead going into the HEI seems to make a firm connection, the male plug in the HEI cap feels like a loose tooth. I jiggled the crap out of it, but it didn't seem to do anything. Still, the more I think about it, the more I suspect that damn distributor.

Could there be an intermittent coil issue? I thought those things were either good or bad... no in between. Could it be something like the rotor floating away from the cap or some other bizarre circumstance? All this started when I replaced the intake and carb (and, as such, pulled and re-stabbed the distributor). Normally, I'd start eyeballing the carb, but there's nothing I can think of that would make one do what this one's doing.

Thoughts anyone? This one's driving me absolutely batty!