Okay last week my truck straight up died. Would not fire, or even try to start. Just crank and crank and crank.

After about 3-4 days I came to the conclusion I had bad fuel. It would not light on fire if poured on the ground. I also tested fuel I had in a gas can, which did burn. So I have now drained my tank completely, re-installed it, and put in fresh fuel that I know is good. (Lights on fire).

Now the truck runs again, but its rough. Somehow I picked up a missfire. I pulled the plugs and they where gas fowled. SO I cleaned them, but they where still dirty so I replaced them. The missfire got worse with the brand new Autolite plugs, and would not idle. So I put the NGK plugs back in, and it smoothed out a bit and it idles (roughly), but there is still a miss. I replaced the plug wires as well because one read bad on an Ohmmeter. I still have a miss and the truck runs terrible, and I am now absolutely stumped as far as what to do. My truck has been out of commission for a week now, and school has stared this week. I am missing it so far due the the fact that my truck runs like ass.

what kind of wires did you replace them with? i know that once i bought some bad wires from advance auto parts (some 8mm wires) that gave me a bad idle too...replaced them with a different brand (7mm wires) never had a problem again..right now i'm running 7mm wires from napa(napa brand)

I've got Napa brand wires on it now. I swapped from NGK wires.

take your float bowl off and clean it out. Sounds like you got water in the fuel. then run some kind of water eater fuel additive.

ThermoAid #7100 from napa.

try and change your ignightor. sounds like that could be a problem they have a tendence to go out

try checking the spark plug gap with the new plugs. if a plug is gapped to far (from the manuf.) they sometimes wont ignite the fuel...causing a miss.

I rebuilt the carb after cleaning the fuel. I do need to get the fuel additive, I just can't go anywhere right now since I don't have a drivable vehicle.

Jeff all the plugs are gapped to .050.


And I do not have a stock ignition system, I am running an MSD.

your battery may have gone bad an it burnt your msd up. check your battery

Battery is fine. Brand new deep cell.

Seth, You cleaned the plugs, make sure they have no small deposits stuck down in around the porcelin and the spark plug threaded body grounding them out, my next question is why such a large gap? .031 is stock, with the MSD you get a little hotter spark but .050 is a bit excessive, are you also running an aftermarket hotter coil? I would set them back to around .031 and try thay, with the wide gap its just working the system harder to throw the long spark and any weak link is where the spark will take a path to, bad wire insulation, cap, ect before it goes to the plug.
Also with the bad gas its possible you got some build up on a valve and its not seating causing a cylider miss, you could do a compression check to verify all the cylinders are up to snuff. Also give the cap a look inside to see there is no cracks or carbon tracking between contacts.
Its doubtful but worth asking, are the plug wires on correctly, none crossed at the cap or on the plugs? Good luck.

.050 was what the plugs where at. I will adjust them to .030 ad give it a shot. I am running the MSD Blaster coil with the ignition box.

I will borrow my friends compression tester, and see what happens. Maybe try a carbon cleaning system, along with that fuel dryer.

I will also inspect the cap. Thats a good call.

. Maybe try a carbon cleaning system, along with that fuel dryer.

Once you get the miss ironed out a good carbon cleaner is your right foot and some straight line pavement

If it is an older motor maybe the water in the fuel cleaned the cumbustion chamber enough to knock off a piece of cardon and stick a valve. This happened to mine.

I had a terrible miss in the truck after I put it back together and I thought I was gonna have to tear it down and redo the timing. No matter what I did, new plugs, cap, rotor wires etc.... nothing helped. I tried a little dielectric grease on the plugs, wires and cap and its gone. 3mos. and no miss. Its just a cheap ass suggestion.

Seth, when you rebuilt the carb did you replace the powervalve by chance? if the engine ever backfired through the the carb it may have blown it.