Virginia suddenly went from running great to barely running at all

[WoodenBirdOfPrey]

Well I ran some Lucas injector cleaner in it since I have a gallon of the stuff sitting around and it's worked well for me before.  I know these don't have injectors, but I figured the same principle of cleaning out deposits and varnish buildup from poor fuel would still apply with the carb.  I can't say for sure that the Lucas is what did it, but Virginia is running good again with no other changes, vacuum is still reading around 17 at idle.

[WoodenBirdOfPrey]

I think I found part of the problem.  At least I found A problem.

I did the juicebox ignition upgrade last night.  Although the wires and dist cap appeared to be pretty new, the wires were Mopar units dated 1999.  The plugs were Bosch coppers, installed back in 2007 and have 25,000 miles on them.  considering the miles, they were surprisingly clean and none of them were showing any signs of oil burning which surprised me for a 172k motor. 

When I pulled the plug wires off the dist, cylinder #4 terminal came off with a puff of blue powder erupted from under the boot.  The picture below says it all.  I'm amazed it ran as good as it did, once it got warmed up it wasn't missing at all.



It still runs a little rough when it's cold but I think that's just the BBD being a BBD.  If I get up the motivation I'll take it apart and clean the idle tubes and see if that helps.

[ammachine390]

I'm amazed it ran as good as it did, once it got warmed up it wasn't missing at all.

My 94 Escort would do the same. One of the spark plug wires was actually completely broken (they were still the original wires). When it was cold it would run intermittently on 3 cylinders but when it warmed up, it ran fine.