I have a 85 f-250 460 4 speed manuel tranny 4x4 that I just got. It is starting to get slugish when I put my foot into it. My budy said it might be the plugs, but I pulled a couple out and they seem fine a good burn color to them. Or my wires might be arching out. Or the cap might have a crack in it. Or in side the Distr. Has any body had any trouble with this on any of their trucks. Please help.

 

A good tune-up would not be a waste of money. This would include:

The plugs. Even though the color looks good, they may worn, and the gap can be too big. The center electrode should have a nice sharp edge. If you do not know when they were last replaced, go ahead and replace them.

The cap and the rotor. The terminals get erroded away after many miles.

The wires. Check them for condition. If they are not really stiff and do not have cracks, you can clean them up and re-use them.

The above are basic wear items that will need to be replace or checked after so many miles. After you do that you can check some other things. What I would do is:

Check the timing. Get a timing light and follow the procedure. If it looks good, I would then leave the vacuum hose off the distributor, and then with the timing light shining onthe marks, rev the engine. You should see the timing mark swing way up the scale. This will tell you the weights in the distributor are working.

I would then rev the engine a little bit till you can feel vacuum on the hose you disconnected from the distributor. Keeping the vacuum on the hose, plug it in and then unplug the hose from the distributor. Every time you plug the hose in with vacuum on it, you should see the timing mark jump up. If it doesn't then you know the vacuum advance can on the side of the distributor is bad.

While you are poking around under the engine, take the air cleaner off and check all the vacuum lines for cracking.

 

I got an 84 f-250 460 auto, did the same thing, rebuilt the carb. it was dumping way to much fuel into the motor. so when u put ur foot on the peadel it stalled for a sec because it was flooding it.

 

If you have a holley, the power valves do tend to leak when they get old.

 

I tried the tune up it worked for a day. Then it went back to the same thing. A friend told me to try the vacum advance and see if that helps or is working. If that dosnt do the trick i will get the carb rebuilt.

 

Did anything look bad?

 

The cap, rottor, wires and plugs looked like they should of. But my distributor looks rusty. My friend told me to pull the vac. hose off the carb side and try to suck on it to see if the vac. advance was working. It didn't move. So i will be picking up a distributor soon. I don't know anything about carbs. or i would just rebuild it and be done with it. I all so want to rebuild the motor but that will be down the road. Thanks a lot.

 

I do not think you can move the advance by sucking on it but if you stick your tongue in the hole you can feel if it holds vacuum.
You need to use a vacuum pump to be for sure.