1972 F100. 2wd. 390. Truck started hesitating when I accelerate and some time backfires. Twice now the truck has died when I take off and wouldn’t restart. Waited 5 min and started up. Since this has gotten worse. It now has a very rough idle and almost dies. I started chasing gas delivery. Replaced two gas filters. Replaced valve on bottom of carb and replace accelerator pump diaphragm. Nothing changed. Changed fuel pump tonight. Seems to accelerate better but still hesitates and truck barely runs at idle. Not sure where to go with this. Any ideas?

I thought about timing but dismissed as I haven’t touched anything to affect it. I did a tuneup this summer and all was perfect then and has been running good. I guess I need to check. My first old truck and I am learning. What would cause timing or point gap to just go out?

ok. Thanks. I am running points. Will take look tomorrow evening. Learning as I go on this project.

More like 5 minutes! NOS points are plentiful and cheap, the condensers are too, but they are starting to show their age. Motorcraft still makes both or did up until recently. Can't cheap out on ignition parts.

Running contact points have a lot of little "gotchas" that most people don't know about anymore, like lubing the distributor cam with a light film of high temp cam grease, so the rubbing block doesn't wear down right away and close up the gap. Even so, it should be checked again after 500 miles or so with a new set of points as they wear a little bit before settling in. Dwell meters are another lost art too.

Ebay always has a passle of them. Keep in mind the distributor itself has to be in good shape for points to give satisfactory service. Mechanically, any "slop" or sideplay due to worn bushings/shaft will make you want to pull your hair out, because the dwell will never read the same twice. On the other hand, they will last a really long time when setup right. Years ago a tune-up was maybe a twice a year affair, when people drove ten or fifteen thousand miles a year and wanted to stay on top of things but most people take several years to put that many miles on their trucks now.

The condensers are more problematic. Overseas import condensers are complete Scheiße ; I've experimented with modern 600 volt DC poly film capacitors like the "Orange Drop", these work good. 0.22uF 715P Sprague, for example. They will handle the high pulse current that ignition service places on them. The smaller more compact capacitors are tempting, like the metalized film types but they can't handle the current. The Model T collector guys are the ones who actually hashed this out, because the originals are needing replacement by now. NOS ignition condensers will often work OK, but it's a crap shoot. They really need to be tested under rated voltage for "leakage", a capacitance test using a modern multimeter won't do this. They can also work OK when cold, but then start to fail when they get to normal operating temp. So there's a lot going on with those critters.

I had the same symptoms and it ended up being a bad coil