I rolled the truck back out of the garage on Monday, tried to get it started again and it ran really rough for a few seconds the first couple times. I pulled the coil wire off the cap and cranked it over, spark was kinda thin and yellow. I took each spark plug out, held each one against the block and each cylinder had spark. I tried swinging the distributor between fully advanced and fully retarded, I pulled it out and moved it a tooth at a time both ways, I even moved the firing order again. That's when it started spitting, sputtering, and backfiring without actually running. It progressively got worse until it wouldn't even kick, just crank. That's when I decided to give up for the night and pushed it back into the garage.

That's when I decided to test all of the components with a multi-meter and rule out all the possibilities... The electronic pickup inside the distributor had zero continuity. It's dead.

So now I have to decide whether to mod the distributor or not. I can buy the MSD magnetic pickup and grind/file it to fit, for the possibly distant future when I can get an MSD 6A box and all I would have to do is drop it in and go.

If I don't want to mod this distributor, I'm really tempted to get the cheapest pickup I can find that'll fit this distributor and try it. If it doesn't work I'm only out $15, but I don't expect it to last long if it does actually work.

On another note, I pulled the wiper motor apart to see why it only had one speed, EXTRA slow. When I pulled it apart I didn't expect to find it packed completely full of grease... When I pulled the armature out of the housing, one of the magnets was stuck to the armature itself, and the brush contacts looked a little burnt. I took some 600 grit to the contacts, but there are still some deep grooves in it. I also might have kinda accidentally dropped the little plastic cover that goes over the terminals and broke it...

I'm going to epoxy the magnet back into the motor housing, glue the plastic cover back together because that's where the plug clips into, and put the entire motor assembly back together. I'll test it before bolting it back in, but I'm not sure exactly what type of grease it will need or how much it will need. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't need half a pound packed into it...

Oh, and the parking brake lever sticks a bit now that I got the right length cable, but I haven't taken it apart and cleaned all the rust out. Hoping that frees it up.

Thanks again for reading.