All,
Thanks again for your help.
I woke up yesterday morning with the plan to finally get the truck fixed and running smoothly again. It was my goal for the entire day.
The first thing I did was put a mark on the side of the distrubutor that lined up with the #1 cap connector. I then removed the cap and put the truck in high gear. By rocking the truck I was able to get the pointer on the U/C mark on the flywheel and get the points open at the #1 cylinder location. I then looked at the end of the rotor and it was about 1/2" from the previous mark (the cap location of the #1 connector). I put another mark on the side of the distributor for the rotor location. Obviously, something is wrong. A friend who was helping me said to loosen the distributor, pull it up, and move the rotor to the right location. I didn't think it wasn't quite that simple so I said "let's put the original distributor cap back on and see how it runs first". So I removed the new NAPA cap and put on the old one that came on the truck when I bought it and had been modified by the PO (the aligning tab had been ground off). I connected the ignition wires, set the cap on so the #1 wire would line up with the actual rotor location. The truck stared immediately and after warming up idled smoothly. I took it for a short drive and there was no misfire, surging or bucking like before. In order words, it ran great like it did before I decided to do the tune up! LOL!
Long story short, I decided just to leave it like it is. The truck is running great although there is some type of rotor alignment issue for lack of a better description. If it was just a matter of pulling the distributor and reinstalling, I asked myself why didn't the PO and the mechanic I took it to do this??
Regardless, the truck is running great and I can drive it again.
Any ideas???
Thanks again for your feedback.
Ron
