On occasion, atleast a few times a day, my car will stumble. It seems to only happen past 2,000 rpms, even when driving normally. Plugs are new, distributor's new (not remanned), wires are new, ignition coil's only a couple of months old.

Also, when I get on it and run it through 1st-2nd, it seems to be 'popping'... Like my exhaust is making little backfires sometimes.

Could this be a timing issue maybe?

 

Yes it COULD be....but it could also be a lot of other issues as well. Give us a run down on what we're all looking at.

 

I do not have a timing gun. So unfortunately, I can't check the timing unless I get one from a friend which I should be able to do relatively soon. I do know though, that when my timing was last set, it was off by a few degrees than what it was set at before... Curious if maybe my balancer could be on its way out, causing the timing to slip a little bit here and there? That makes sense, but the balancer was replaced less than 4 months ago... Help!

 

Hate to say this.....but you might of burned some plugs up running it on open headers for a couple days.

Or even worse you burnt an exhaust valve.

 

Do you have a way to monitor fuel pressure? Hood mounted gauge?

 

I don't, however, interesting story... I was wondering if it was a fuel issue first actually.

When I first bought my car, I took it to Race Related when they were still around. Josh Levin checked over my car, ran some tests, got the thing running really well, and when we had the FP gauge from the schraeder valve to the hood cowl, the pressure was slightly low. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something about the spring inside my FPR getting weak because of age? Does that make any sense to anyone?

 

thats very possible but so are a lot of other things . You need to rule out the simple stuff first . Plugs , wires , fuel filter , timing , etc.... a lean miss will make it backfire as well as timing being off . The balancer spinning doesnt make your timing off unless you set it with a bad balancer . If it was right to begin with , the balancer wont hurt it , it just wont be accurate when you check it . If thats an issue , use a vacuum gauge for timing

 

you said you have some new parts , but are they GOOD parts ? or auto zone specials?

 

Thanks for the reply. My car's currently over at Genium. Dave's gonna run through a few things tomorrow and let me know what he finds out, if anything.

All replaced parts were decent parts, as far as I know. Fuel filter hasn't been replaced since I've personally owned the car (about 6k miles) and I highly doubt it's been done before... I have a Motorcraft fuel filter in the back seat actually.

As Dave mentioned earlier, the car was run on open headers for around 6 days, if that gives anyone any insight.