Do you want the rest of that cap to get injected into your cylinder as it continues to disintegrate?

I'd toss that IAC and get a new one - how expensive are they?

 

Well, pintle cap it is! I guess I just call my local Ford dealer and ask for a pintle cap? Autozone doesn't know what one is.

The bolt is not going so well. Drilling isn't going well at all, so I may end up pulling the head just to take it to the machinist to drill and tap the hole.

 

It's all back together and running; I just need to replace a few more things before I can put it on the highway.

Rossman-thanks for the lead on the intake gasket. I replaced the intake gasket, and most of the bolts didn't have much torque on them at all. Seems like that could have been a problem...

Steve--thanks for the advice. It would have been a shame to take the intake back off to retrieve the remainder of that injector cap.

And Cajun--you saved me a lot of money by suggesting that the pintle caps were replaceable. Napa sells them for $0.39/ea, so I replaced every one of them as most of them had hairline cracks in them anyway. I also replaced all 16 o-rings, so the injectors should all be in good shape. The new caps are classic Ford engine blue; they look great. Too bad you really can't see them when they're stuck in the intake. And by the way, none of the local Ford dealers (or other parts houses) had any idea that the pintle caps were replaceable.

Bottom line on the entire thing:
The machine shop had to hot tank each intake three times and wire-brush them to get all the carbon and oil buildup out. Kinda messy.

Intake bolts (and exhaust) were pretty loose. Not a good thing; seems like this was pretty worthwhile.

When I was twirling the distributor in my hand before stabbing it, it bound up really bad. I messed with it and discovered that the upper bearing is SHOT. Lots of play in the shaft. So much that the reluctors are constantly hitting the pickup coil, which is why it bound up when I played with it. The reluctors are almost worn through. This explains several things--some time ago, I posted about the towers and rotor always looking quite burned up and I asked if there was something that would cause too much spark. The answer now seems to be that they're not burned up; they've been rubbing. This also explains the unexplainable red dust that's always inside the distributor. This probably also explains most of the funny idle. It just took a lot to get to this point.

In the end, I need to replace:
-distributor
-the cooling line that comes off the intake that goes to the heater core and holds the temp sensor; this now leaks where the metal and plastic parts mate. This should be difficult to track down.

For now, the Bronco will just move around the neighborhood until I can get the new coolant leak fixed.

Thanks for everybody's help; you've all been great and some really good ideas came out. I'll follow up when I get the new distributor in.

 

Belated follow-up: I replaced the distributor last night, and it's like a new truck. The throttle response is a lot snappier and the idle is a lot smoother. It was so bad that I could move the shaft back and forth to hit either side of the pickup coil with the reluctor assembly. The inside part of the pickup coil was bent up, and the inside of the reluctor setup was grooved all the way around. It's amazing to me that it worked at all. Again, thanks to everybody on this long-winded thread.