Hello to all, new here and have an 83 f-150 302 v8, truck has new carb, plugs, wires, cap and rotor. Was running completely flawless afterwards for a few days and then out of no where it died while idling didnt sputter, just died like the ignition was cut off. The truck immediately fired right up with no excessive cranking and ran smoothly for another 2 or 3 minutes and died again (still idling), fires right back up ran for a minute and started to sputter extremely bad, tried to rev and it wouldnt come up, checked fuel pressure and it was fine carb was getting fuel, started it again still sputtering and out of no where it cleared up. It went back and forth from sputtering to normal a couple times on its own and then back to a sputter before walking away... could this be the ICM? Or would this be an “either it works or doesnt work” type of situation? Could it be the pick up in the distributor? Or could i be missing something else? Any info will be appreciated, thanks in advance

 

Make sure your battery cables and the wires going to your distributor and ignition module are clean and secured properly.

 

FWIW, one day after some damp weather my 86 would not start. I pulled the connector on the side of my coil and cleaned the wires which had some corrosion on them. I put a light coat of dielectric grease on the contacts, the truck has started fine since.

Check for corrosion at the connections.

Here is the one on my truck, I'm not sure what yours looks like.

 

Are you sure you didn't crack a spark plug installing them, I have heard of that happening before. What brand spark plugs are they ?


Thinking more, I recall 5 or 6 years ago, the truck had some running issues, the Distributor was replaced with a rebuilt one from the auto parts store. It wasn't much money.

About 20 years ago my 92 Civic was having intermittent issues, had the ignitor ($90) replaced. Then few months later the coil ($$) and ignitor($$) replaced, seems the coil went out and took the ignitor with it. A few months later I began to notice this brown dust inside the cap. That's when I did what I should have done months and hundreds of dollars before, just bought a rebuilt Distributor, which was like $100.

Just saying it might be time for a rebuilt dizzy, saving money and time chasing old parts.

 

I second the notion of checking the coil connections. The connector on my coil looks like this

https://www.autozone.com/electrical-...eVehicle=false

One of the connectors was loose, and she would just stop. Pop the hood, wiggled the wire, and she fired up like nothing happened. I hate throwing parts at problems, but the connector is only 8 bucks. After removal, I saw one of the contacts was bent,

When she is idling nicely, try wiggling and tugging the wires, If she dies, you know one thing to fix (hopefully the only thing).

Edit: sorry, I missed yours is a 302, so it may be the wrong connector. Still, I'd look at the connection.