I have a 97 F150 auto 2WD short bed.

I havent messed with it for quite a while since i have a 2000 F250 SD 7.3.

Before i stopped driving it ,it had a terrible miss mostly at low rpm's and was becoming weak at all rpm's

One day while sitting at idle it just quit and would not start back up,sounded like it was hitting and missing a cylinder while trying to start.

I'm goin to start doing some process of eliminations this weekend to find the problem...

How do i check to see if it is the timing chiain off a tooth or off completely?

I'm old school and we used to just pull the distributor cap and see if the cam was in time with the crank by looking at the rotor cap..but i'm clueless on how to do this engine with out tearing into the front of it to actualy SEE the timing chain/gears...

It has 216k on it..engine was swapped with a reman at around 110k when a freind owned it because the old one hydro locked and bent a rod

 

Timing chains usually don't have problems on 4.2s. There is a tensioner to take up any slack. I wonder if clogged EGR ports was causing your miss at low RPMs and a valve spring broke when it died. I would start by checking compression and if any cyls are low then pull that valve cover and inspect the valve springs. Also pressure test the cooling system to rule out bad intake gaskets.