Last time I had the Maverick out it drove great all the way to work, then a couple blocks from home started having problems. It started to stutter and surge at partial throttle. It idles just fine at around 900RPMs, but as soon as you lean on the gas a little bit it starts jumping all over from 800-1400 RPMs. It does this all all the way up to around 2000, then seems to smooth back out. It has never had this problem before, and there have been no recent changes to the engine setup (302, Edelbrock carb, duraspark ignition robbed from my old 73). So far I've done- -cleaned fuel filter -fresh tank of gas with carb cleaner -checked firing order, then checked again -checked for spark at all 8 cylinders -grabbed the duraspark connection closest to the dizzy and the engine almost cut out. Wiggled it and the engine cut out. -removed the duraspark module, removed electrical tape, checked/cleaned all connections -Re attached duraspark and had same results Any ideas? If the duraspark is dead it may be a good excuse for me to just make the switch to an MSD/Streetfire box.
your getting close to finding the problem. if wiggling the harness at the distributor connector causes the missing then you need to keep following the wiring. i doubt its the box scene your at the distributor end. what do the terminals look like? is there lots of corrosion in them? is the wiring in good shape?
The wiring appears to be in good shape, all the blades in the connectors have dielectric grease on them, so no corrosion.
Check to make sure the female connectors have tension by doing a pull test on them with a spare spade terminal.
^ Ditto...you may need to tighten up the spades in the plug, or if you must. Give the pins a slight twist to acheive better contact...Good luck!!!
Well, I cut the Ford plugs off and spliced the wires together to bypass any plug issues. It started, ran like crap, then cut out. Now it won't run. I'm leaning towards tossing the whole duraspark setup in the trash and swapping in a Pertronix Ignitor III. Gives me the benifits of the box with no extra stuff cluttering up the bay. Question is can I use it with the dizzy from my duraspark setup? If not I'm pretty sure I've still got an old points dizzy somewhere.
I called pertronix and the short answer is NO... you will have to use a differant dizzy... Just pertronix I and II is available for the duraspark...
Did that too, no change. I always planned on doing away with the duraspark anyways, so this is a good enough excuse. Ordering an Igniter III setup and flame thrower coil. This will give me a rev limiter too which is nice, and everything's internal to the dizzy.
Try grounding the black wire going to the distributor to the battery. It's that ground, a bad wire from dist to module, or the pick-up in the distributor.
