Help with gremlins

[1969 C/K CST]

My '84 has me puzzled. At any driving condition, even sitting at idle. The engine rpms will fall to a sluggish pace, then come back up to normal on it's on. This is driving me crazy. I have never had a truck do this. Being an '84 with a guadrajet, I don't know of any electronics. The truck is an '84, bone stock, except for the removal of the emmisions pump. I have drove the truck for 5 years and all of a sudden this starts. I have changed the vacum advance, rebuilt the carb, changed old vacum hoses, and replaced the weird looking goose neck on the intake. I finally don't know what else to look for. I need help before I get to the "go or blow" stage.

[86 GMG]

my 84 died on the road on day i thought i ran out of gas but come to find out the distributer crapped out on me. it has some kinda esc ecs something to that affect and that was my headache. have you looked into the dist. just a suggestion and really dont know much else i had a friend assist me in this situation there is a thread about this a little info there but not much if i can remimber right. best luck and hopefully you wont be on the side of the road.

[84 PUMPKIN]

If your truck is "bone" stock then you might want to take a look at the ESC (Electronic Spark Control). The ESC box is located behind the glove box and connects to the distributor via a wiring pigtail. My '84 C10 starting running bad and I traced the problem to the ESC. I removed the box and replaced the distributor with a "regular" HEI and fixed the problem.

If your ESC is gone already then this info is useless.


Looks like 86 GMG was posting the same suggestion as I was typing.

[86 GMG]

yeah later after it was fixed i found out that i could have done what you did and put an hei normal distributer which i had in the garage on a shelf so about 80.00 bucks later i had a rebuilt dist. and was running again oh well i will use that damn dist one of these days

[82c10]

on www.73-87.com he has a way to wire around the esc, i can't find the link, i am sure swervin, or n2trucks will

[Captkaos]

The link is here for the ECS removal/upgrade:
http://www.73-87.com/7387garage/drivetrain/escrepl.htm

[1969 C/K CST]

Thanks guys. I'll definitly take a look at it. I think it does have the retard when you hammer it. Idiot proof device to save the trans if you ask me. I like the swapping to regular HEI idea. It was weird. Fine one day, all to he!! the next. You'll have to excuse me, I'm not used to all this high tech stuff.

[crawdad]

Read the article in the link posted above. You don't have to buy another distributor. All you need is a short jumper wire and you're in business. I had a post about this a few weeks ago and I even posted a pic of the jumper. HTH