Ok I have a 88 LX that has been converted over to Mass air flow. It has ran great for years, recently I have noticed while cruising (barely pressing the gas just maintaining speed) It misses horribly. When under a hard acceleration it picks up and runs beautifully but misses when cruising. I recently replaced the plugs with Autolite AR133 racing plugs and the problem got worse. I gapped them to .054 and put in new plug wires, Autolite 8mm. It has become very cold natured lately and tries to stall out until you rev it up to about 3000 rpm and hold it there for about 30 seconds to warm the engine. Once some heat is flowing thru it it runs great except or the missing while cruising.

I put in a new Accel distributor cap and rotor about a year ago. Wondering if that may be the problem. Possibly needs replacing again.

 

Ok I drove it to work tonight and OMG that thing missed skipped and sputtered like none other. My buddy said that with the drastic change in sparkplugs I need to adjust my timing or go back to the original plugs. BTW The original plugs that ran well were Bosch Platinums and the new ones I put in were Autolite AR133's, Please help.

 

mine did that when my o2s went bad also clean the maf

 

Well this didnt start until I changed the plugs. Well I did some research and It looks like the AR133's will work in the 5.0 but where as the recommended gap for most 5.0 plugs is .054 Some guys on another forum said they were running AR133's at a gap of .025. So I think I may have this one solved. I'll find out tomorrow. Im taking the ones I have back and swapping them for a new set. Or maybe I'll just pull them out and close the gap on them to .025 and see where that leaves me.

 

dont forget to remove your spout connector when you set the timing. and check your tps sensor. it should be a .98 volts with the key on but not running. maf could be dirty. iac motor could be too. try cleaning them.

 

My spout connector has never been connected to the distributor since Ive owned it. Almost 4 years now. I think once I get the spark plug thing fixed, I should seriously examine my timing.And hook the spout connector up. What do you guys think?

 

I will defintely look into the IAC motor cleaning because that sounds like like it could be causing my engines lopey-ness when I first crank it up.

 

OMG I just pulled the plugs, and 3 of them are cracked.

 

INstalled new Autolite P25 Platinums. The guy at the shop said AR133's should be used with Racing Fuel so He recommended the ones I just installed. Mucho Mucho improvement. I think Im gonna clean the Idle Air Motor thingy on the throttlebody next.

 

thats good, did you check if they were cracked before you put them in