When I step on the gas the motor vibrates really badly. It just started this today. At idle, it also running really rough. . . shaking the whole car.

Timing is advanced 8* and it would sometimes knock under serious load when it was hot, but I don't think that's the problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

check your plug wires/plugs.... sounds like you got a dead cylinder

 

i 2nd that

 

I did. I also changed the cap and rotor to make sure. I still have the problem.

Now what?

 

If the vibration/miss happens at idle, get the engine warm and at idle. CAREFULLY remove the spark plug wires, one at a time. Spark plug wire pliers are really good for this. This is done more easily at the distributor than at the plugs.

Every plug wire removed should result in even more vibration or miss. Remove a plug wire, note the idle quality, then reconnect the wire (again, caredully). If you reach a cylinder that makes no difference in idle quality, you've found the suspect or dead cylinder(s). Make sure you check them all, just for arguments' sake.

Remove the plug(s) from the suspect cylinder(s). If the plugs are intact (not damaged, fouled, cracked, gapped correctly) reinstall the plug(s) and start looking at the valve train on the suspect cylinder(s).

 

So I should just a set of pliers to remove the wires from the cap. I won't get shocked?

 

dont use standard pliers, youll damage the boots and the terminal inside the boot. If you use your bare hands or come too close to teh terminal you will get shocked. Not lethal, yet, but i still try to avoid it whenever possible.

 

Well, it appears that the problem was a loose distributor cap. I had bought the Hypercrap cap and rotor about a 1 1/2 years ago, well, the screws that hold the cap down, snapped. So esssentially my cap was just sitting on the distributor. There was actaully a groove on one side of the cap from where the rotor was hitting it.

So now I threw away that piece of crap, but the other half of the screws that broke are still sitting in the distributor. So that means that my new cap and just sitting on there like the old one, but this time I used a rubber band and some zip ties to secure it to the distributor.

Yeah, I know it's ghetto, but I really don't feel like spending $100 on another distributor at the moment. I need to get headers, and I'm almost there.