SO my friends 1988 Pontiac Trans am GTA slightly overheated a few times along I20 from Dallas to Atlanta (no steam just his temp gauge went high and he pulled over till the sun went down). On his way back from NC he went through Tennesse and had no issues. Now in town he is stalling out and rough idling. I pulled half his spark plugs on the 350 v8 and they were NGK R V power gapped at .045 and installed Rapidfire ac delco platinum spark plugs that I gapped at about .036 - .037. Halfway through I cranked the engine to see how everything was going, car started then died within 7 seconds. I thought returning things to factory specs would fix things, its a tuned port injection with a stage 1 performance chip as the only aftermarket add on. PLEASE HELP me before I dig this whole any deeper, where did I mess up? All the wires are attached.

 

What made you think it was a spark plug problem?

 

The smell of unburned hydrocarbons near the tail pipe to me indicated an ignition system, air intake, or vacuum hose issue. As the problem minimized after the engine warm up I took a guess that the spark plugs had never been changed since my friend didnt ever recall having it done.