Periodic miss is eluding me. Accepting random suggestions.

Yup! See thread...http://mmb.maverick.to/showthread.php?t=60345

That gas has been in there since WAY before Hurricane Ike.

I am down to half a tank, trying to run it out and refill it with fresh gas.

 

Yeah, you might want to run that gas out. I have a car that has 3 year old gas in it and it is running ruff. I hope to get it down to empty this weekend, it is on a qtr of a tank now. Needs new gas for sure. And then I will put some good fuel system cleaner in it and some stabil, so it can sit for another 3 years probably. But I did park it 3 years ago with stabil, even though they say it is only good for less than a year.

 

I wouldnt waste much time trying to tune anything with fuel that old. Get rid of it. Fuel has a shelf life of around 2 months then it starts to turn without stabilizer. Old fuel will make a hell of a mess of a carb. I sure wouldnt run on it. Drain it out. Change your filter and get some fresh fuel. Hopefully the tank is clean. Install one of the clear filters so you can monitor the fuel condition. If you start getting rust chunks in the filter the tank may need some attention.

 

Is the Pertronix wiring tight?

Just a thought.... I have Pertronix in both my cars with the OEM coils. The red wire has to be firmly connected or it will miss or even not run at all.

Push or pull on the red wire connected to the coil and make sure it's not "wiggly" - it is likely sitting underneath the Ford push on connector and sometimes this does not make a solid connection.

Ford's 'push on' connectors for the + and - terminals get loose after a while and the threaded bases can get rusty, also the connector is recessed so your Pertronix 'O' connector may only be touching plastic (their connectors also seem to corrode quickly). If your black is under a lock nut it's ok, but on mine the red was loose so I made a slight curve in it to make sure it's contacting the metal when the engine is running.

 

Several good points here.

The last time I drove it, just before Dan asked how old the fuel was, I was driving past a gas station with 3/4 tank and thought to myself, "when did I fill up last?" Last time was early last summer when the car was on jackstands, and I had the extra 20(?) gallon gas tank just sitting in that car, offering a place to store extra generator gas if we go a hurricane. So the gas is probably from May of last year.

This morning, we will take the maverick to breakfast, then I will drop all fuel and put it in my "lawnmower" storage tanks.

Then, since I am only paying $1.81/gal for gas, top it off with a full tank of the fresh stuff!

As for the wiring, I got rid of the Ford push-on connectors years ago and went with nuts. But I admit, I still have not looked at the basics. Distributor cap, rotor, pertronix gap, etc. Those are all new with less than 200 miles on them, and other than sitting for a year or so, they are new. If one of those was an issue, I would be having a "poor" running car, much worse than how this is running now.

And, again, the car is running GREAT! It just has a very minor miss that nobody else hears unless I tell them about it, and even that is only at low speeds cruising, like under 3000 rpms. The rest of the time it is chirping through gears even at 1/2 throttle accelleration. So it isn't running anywhere near "bad", but I can hear the potential for a little extra in there if I can fix this pesky miss.