Hi all,
I'm back after a busy summer season. My '96 F150 is picking up a P0303 code and is running rough at idle and during normal driving operation. It doesn't seem to run as rough if you rev the motor while in park or neutral, but it does miss or have bumps in the sound of the motor to a lesser degree than with it in drive and going down the road. As a reminder to those who may remember my truck and to those who don't know my truck yet, my '96 F150 is OBDII mass air, originally a 5.0L now a 5.8L stroked to a 393. I have a SCT Xcal programmer that is used to flash the ECM for the increased size of the motor and fine tuning. The truck is set up for emissions legal operation, so EGR etc... is connected and operational (or at least should be).

I have eliminated the possibilities of spark plug, spark plug wire, and coil failures by swapping in new plug and wire and another coil I had sitting around. I am running a Jacobs Ignitions off road ignition module and coil, but when I swapped my spare coil in, I eliminated the Jacobs ignition for that test, so with or without the Jacobs Ignition I still have the same problem. I'm starting to think I have a bad distributor or stock ignition module which is still used in conjunction with the Jacobs module.

Alot of the posts that are about the same code of P0303 are from newer trucks, which point to a coil pack, plug, or wire. Or there are a number of them that point to the EGR system. I don't see how the EGR system of my '96 could pin point to a single cylinder, but what do you guys think?

I'm leaning hard on a distributor or module, by the way, this truck has a remote mounted module on the driver's side fender. Any help is much appreciated, I'd like to get my truck running smooth and proper!