86 GMC truck being a problem child

Jan 03, 2006 5 Replies

About two weeks ago, my truck started having problems. It began to start rough, it would barely idle until you revved the crap out of it, and the fact that our exhaust is shot probably wasn't helping. Yesterday I went to start it, and it fired up, idled sadly for about three seconds, and died. Try to fire it back up, but it just cranks and cranks. So I figured it must be a spark problem since there was tons of gas - and sure enough, I had really weak spark. We're talking barely a flicker of orange. So I replaced the rotor and dist.cap. Nothing. No spark at all from anything. I have a really, really bad feeling that it's my coil, but I thought I would ask around and see if anyone else knew something else it could be.



Any suggestions would be welcome! Thanks!



On that year, that could be your only other logical solution to the problem, take off the coil take it to autozone and see if they can test it. If not they arent much just pick one up. Either that or the ignition module is bad, that is if it has electronic ignition, some do some dont, could be the points in the distributor.

" Either that or the ignition module is bad,

Points! Really? I enjoyed that.

no points in '86, should all be HEI by then. Actually I think HEI was introduced in trucks maybe 1974-75?

nate

Adam wrote:

All I know is a friend of mine has a 77 with the old type distributor

On a car that old, change the pickup coil, and the radio Interference Capacator [ condenser ] A new module makes sense, usually a weak module will allow starting, but cause poor hi speed response. Age wise, I'd say pickup coil and RFI cap, as a "good" module doesn't " wear out "

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