My truck suddenly quit running last night while on the interstate. I was doing 75 mph, running fine and without any warning it just quit. Once on the side of the road, I popped the hood and I could smell something was hot. I looked at the pre-converter (I believe that is what it is. It's the first exhaust canister that the 2 exhaust pipes off the inline 6 go into) and it was cherry red. I let it cool down and while it would crank, it would not start. So I had it towed to my house. Today I hooked up a fuel pressure gauge to the fuel rail and after cranking it for a while, I registered 55 lbs on the gauge. My Ford manual says 40 lbs in one place and in another it says 55 lbs so it appears that I have adequate fuel pressure. Next I pulled a sparkplug and grounded the sparkplug body and had my boy crank the engine. I did not see any spark. So it appears I have spark issues. Can anyone tell me what I should check next (maybe something 9 times out of 10 that it is on these year Ford F150's) and how to do the check. Any advice would be appreciated. Here's some facts on my truck: 1992 F150/4.9L/auto trans/2WD/145K miles. It's been a great dependable truck and I maintain it well.
On a side note, I'm thinking the red hot preconverter may have been glowing because when the sparkplugs quit receiving spark, raw fuel got dumped into the preconverter causing the red glowing. At least thats what I hope caused it because I don't want to face replacing the cats right now, LOL. Anyway, any advice would be appreciated on the no start situation.
Thanks.